Chapter VIII: Part 8

Fifteen years ago,--it was on the seventeenth of August, 1845,--I made my first pilgrimage to Lorette, in company with a friend. We wandered at large through the village, talking _patois_ to the swarthy damsels, and picking up Indian knick-knacks, as we went. At last, fired with the ambition of doing a distinguished thing, we proposed calling upon the head chief of the village, whose name, I think, was Simon, but might possibly have been Peter,--for I regret to say that my memory is rather misty upon that important point. That personage was absent from home; but we were hospitably received by his father, who also appeared to be his butler, as he was engaged in bottling off some root-beer into stone blacking-jars, when we entered. I suppose the chief's father must once have been a chief himself, and that his menial position arose from the fact of his appearance being rather disreputable. He was a decrepit and very dirty old man, in a tight blue frock-coat, and swathed as to his spindle shanks with scarlet leggings. Sitting by a small window at the farther end of the large, bare room, was the prettiest little Huronite damsel I ever saw, rather fair than dark, and very neatly attired in a costume partly Indian. This little girl--a granddaughter of the dirty old man, as that person informed us--was occupied in tying up some small bundles of what the Canadians call _racine_--a sweet-smelling kind of rush-grass, sold by them in the Quebec market, and used like _sachets_, for imparting a pleasant odor to linen garments. After some conversation of a general character, the old man requested us to write our names in his visitors' book, which was a long, dirty volume, similar in form to those usually seen upon bar-counters. In this book we were delighted to find the autographs of many dear friends, of whom we little expected to meet with traces in this nook of the North. Mark Tapley and Oliver Twist, for instance, had visited the place in company some two years before. There could be no mistake about it; for there were the two names, in characteristic, but different manuscript, bound together by the mystic circumflex that indicated them to be friends and travelling-companions. The record covered a period of ten years; but was that sufficient to account for the appearance of Shakspeare on its pages? And yet there he was; and in merry mood he must have been, when he came to Lorette,--for he wrote himself down "Bill," and dashed off a little picture of himself after the signature, in a bold, if not artistic manner. Our friend Titmouse was there, too, represented by his famous declaration commencing, "Tittlebat Titmouse is my name." He seemed to have taken particularly fast hold of the memory of the old Huron, who described him as a tremendous-looking, big person, with large black whiskers, and remembered having enjoyed a long pull at a brandy-flask carried by him. Of course there can be no doubt about that man being the real Tittlebat of our affections. Of the other signatures in the Huronite album, I chiefly remember that of M.F. Tupper, which I looked upon at the time as a base forgery, and do aver my belief now that it was nothing else: for the aged sagamore described the writer of that signature as a young, cheerful, and communicative man, who smoked a short, black pipe, and had spaniels with him. Could my friend, could I, venture to inscribe our humble names among this galaxy of the good and great? Not so: and yet, to pacify the Huronite patriarch's thirst for autographs, we wrote signatures in his brown old book; and if that curious volume is still in existence, the names of Don Caesar de Bazan and Sir Lucius O'Trigger, Bart., will be found closely linked together on a particular page with the circumflex of friendship.

And now the old man, delighted with the addition to his autographs, proposed to treat us to an exhibition of several medals gained by him for deeds of valor when he was a warrior, and previously to his having entered upon the career of a bottler of root-beverages. He had silver disks presented to him by at least two of Thackeray's Georges, a couple from William IV., and I think one from her present Majesty, Queen Victoria. All of these he touched with reverence, and not until he had purified his hands upon a dirty towel. After we had duly admired these decorations, and listened with patience to the old man's garrulous talk about them, he told us that he had yet another to show,--one presented to him many years ago by a great man of that day,--a man embalmed for all posterity on account of his unrivalled performances upon the tight-rope,--a man of whom he reduced all description to mendicancy in designating him as _un danseur très-renommé sur la corde tendue_. The medal was a small silver one, and it bore the following inscription:--

FROM EDMUND KEAN, THE BRITISH ACTOR,

TO TOUSSAHISSA, CHIEF OF THE HURON INDIANS. 1826.

And such is fame! It appears that Kean, always fond of excitement, had organized a tremendous _pow-wow_ among these poor specimens of the red man, on his visit to Quebec. They adopted him,--constituted him a chief of their tribe. It would be interesting to have a full account of the great passionist's demeanor upon that solemn occasion. Did he harrow up his hearers with a burst from "Othello" or a deep-sea groan from "Hamlet," and then create a revulsion of feeling by somersaulting over the centre-fire of the circle and standing on his head before it, grinning diabolically at the incensed pot? Or did he, foreshadowing the coming Blondin, then unplanned, stretch his tight-rope across the small Niagara that flashes down into the chasm of the St. Charles, and, kicking his boots off, carry some "mute, inglorious" Colcord over in an Indian bark basket? If he did such things, the old Huronite was foggy upon the subject and reserved, limiting his assertions to the statement, that "the British actor" was a _farceur_, and likewise _un danseur très-renommé sur la corde tendue_.

Long afterwards, when I resided at Quebec, my visits to Lorette were very frequent. Once, as I passed along the street, or road, between the straggling log-houses, I was accosted, in good English, by a fat and very jovial old squaw, who was attired in a green silk dress, sported a turban, and appeared to be altogether a superior kind of person. On inquiry, I learned from her that she was the widow of a former chief of the tribe, and came originally from Upper Canada, where she learned to speak English. Her husband had been presented with many medals, she said;--would I like to see them? I followed the old lady into her dwelling, where she showed me several silver medals, which I thought I recognized as the same exhibited by the aged Huronite with the red legs. But the Kean medal was not among them; nor could I, by any system of description in my power, recall the features of the relic to the memory of the old squaw.

Subsequently, I tried many times to trace it, but without success. Many strangers visit Lorette during the summer season, and it is possible that some virtuoso, struck by the associative value of the relic, may have prevailed on its owner to part with it for a consideration. There are people who would have possessed themselves of it without the exchange of a consideration. Should this meet the eye of its present possessor, and if so be that the medal came into his hands on the consideration principle, so that he need not be ashamed of it, he will confer a favor by giving the correct reading of the Indian name. For "Toussahissa," as I have rendered it, is not exact, but only as near as I can make it out from my pencil-memoranda, which, written in a note-book that did occasional duty as a fly-book, have been partially obliterated in that spot by the contact of a large and remarkably gaudy salmon-fly, whose repose between the leaves is disturbed, perhaps, by aquatic nightmares of salmon gaping at him from whirling eddies.

Between Lorette and the unexplored wilderness that stretches away to polar desolation there is but a narrow selvage of civilization. Looking toward it from my windows at Quebec, I could see the blue, serrated ridge of highlands beyond which the surveyor has never yet run his lines,--beyond which the surveyor's lines would be superfluous, indeed, and futile; for the soil is of the barren, rocky kind, and the timber of the scrubby. Not quite so savage is this frontier, indeed, as the wild precincts described by the Nebraska editor, whose meditations for a leader used to be cut short, occasionally, by the bellowing of the shaggy bison at his window, or the incursion of the redoubtable "grizzly" into his wood-shed where the elk-meat hung. But, in the clear, cold nights that precede the punctual and distinct winter of these regions, the black bears often come down from their fastnesses amid the wild ridges, and astonish the drowsy _habitant_ and his household by their pranks among his pigs and calves: also in the spring.

In a small settlement of this wild tract, a few miles to the north-east of Lorette, there dwelt, some six or seven years ago, a poor farmer named Cantin, who added to the meagre fare afforded by his sterile acres such stray birds and hares as he could get within range of his old musket, without risking himself very far away from the isolated clearing. One night in the early part of May, when the snow had disappeared from the open grounds, but lingered yet in the ravines and rocky thickets, a dreadful tumult among the cattle of the settlement indicated the presence of bear. Cantin had the old firelock ready, but the night was dark and unfavorable for active measures. At gray morning, traces of the nocturnal intruder were visible, and that close by the _cabane_ in which Cantin lived, in the little inclosure near which a struggle had evidently taken place, resulting in the discomfiture of a yearling calf, portions of which were discovered in the thickets a short distance from the clearing. Here the patches of snow gave ample evidence of the passage of a very large bear. When the sun was well up, Cantin sallied forth alone, with his gun and a small supply of ammunition,--unluckily for him, a very small supply. He did not return to dinner. Shots were heard in the course of the day, at a considerable distance in the hills; and when the afternoon was far advanced, and Cantin had not made his appearance, several of his neighbors--all the men of the settlement, indeed, and they made but a small party--set out in search of him. The snow-patches facilitated their search; and, having tracked him a good way, they suddenly saw him kneeling by a tree at the end of an open glade, with his hands clasped in an attitude of prayer. He was a frightful spectacle when they raised his _bonnet-bleu_, which had fallen down over his face. The entire facial mask had been torn clean from the skull by a fearful sweep of the bear's paw, and hung from his collar-bone by a strip of skin. He must have been dead for some hours. Fifty yards from where he knelt, the bear was found lying under some bushes, quite dead, and with two bullet-holes through its carcass. Cantin, it appeared, had expended all his ammunition, and the wounded beast had executed a terrible vengeance on him while the life-blood was welling through the last bullet-hole. I saw this bear brought into Quebec, in a cart, on the following day; and it is to be seen yet, I believe, or at least the taxidermal presentment of it is, in the shop of a furrier in John Street of that city. An enterprising druggist bought up the little fat left in the animal after its long winter's fast; and such was the demand among sensational people for gallipots of "grease of the bear that killed Cantin," that it seemed as if fashion had ordained the wearing of hair "on end."

Of the other wild beasts of this hill-district, the commonest is that known to the inhabitants as the _loup-cervier_,--a name oddly enough misconstructed by a writer on Canadian sports into "Lucifer." This is the true lynx,--a huge cat with long and remarkably thick legs, paws in which dangerous claws are sheathed, and short tail. Its principal prey is the common or Northern hare, which abounds in these regions: but at times the _loup-cervier_ will invade the poultry-yards; and he is even held to account, now and then, for the murder of innocent lambs, and the disappearance of tender piglings whose mothers were so negligent as to let them stray alone into the brushwood. These fierce cats have been killed, occasionally, quite close to Quebec. When thus driven to approach populous districts, it must be from scarcity of their accustomed food; for they are usually very savage and ravenous, when found in such places. I know an instance, myself, in which a gentleman of Quebec, riding a little way from the town, was suddenly pounced upon and attacked by a _loup-cervier_, near the Plains of Abraham. He struck the animal with his whip several times, but it persisted in following him, and he got rid of it only by putting spurs to his horse and beating it in speed. The animal was killed soon afterwards, near the same place.

I had heard of another variety of wildcat, seen at rare intervals in the same districts. The _habitant_ is rather foggy on the subject of zoology in general, and my attempts to obtain a satisfactory description of this animal were futile. Some of the definitions of this rare _chat-sauvage,_ indeed, might have answered for specifications of a griffin, or of a vampire-bat. At last, one day, when walking about in the market-place at Quebec, I saw a crowd assembled round a gray-clad countryman, who presided over a small box on which the words _Chat-Sauvage_ were painted. Now was my time to set the question at rest. I invested sixpence in the show. When a good number of sixpences had been paid in, the proprietor opened his box, out from which crawled a fat, familiar raccoon, apparently as much at home in the market-place as he could have been in the middle of his native swamp. And this was the mysterious "wild-cat" about which I had asked so many questions and heard so many stories!

It is noticeable that thunder-storms, travelling from the westward toward Quebec, usually diverge across the valley of the St. Charles in the direction of Lorette, and coast along the ridge of ground on which that place is situated to Charlesbourg, a small village lying about four miles to the east of it, upon the ridge. There the storms appear to culminate, pouring out the full vials of their wrath upon the devoted _habitans_ of white-cotted Charlesbourg. The wayfarer who wends through this rustical district will hardly fail to observe the prevailing taste for lightning-rods. The smallest cottage has at least two of these fire-irons, one upon each gable; houses of more pretensions are provided with an indefinite number; and the big white church has its purple roof so bristled with them, that the pause which a flash of lightning must necessarily make before deciding by which of them to come down must enable any tolerably active person to get out of the way in good time. And yet, with all these defenders of the faithful, I remember how the steeple was taken clean off the big white church, in splinters, one wild night after I had watched a long array of cloud-chariots rolling heavily away eastward along the ridge: also, how a farmer's handsome daughter, the belle of the village, sat upright and dead upon a sofa when people came again to their eyesight after a blinding flash. So much for lightning-rods!--so much for the mystic iron!

When the day of the _Fête Dieu_ comes round, Quebec and its neighboring villages are all alive for the celebration of the _fête_, which takes place on the following Sunday. Then the great suburb of St. Roch is a sight to see. Every street of it is converted into a green alley, embowered with young pine-trees, and flaunting with banners temporarily constructed out of all available pieces of dry-goods, lent by the devoted shop-keepers of the olden Church. Most extraordinary lithographs of holy personages are hung out upon the door-posts and walls of every house. Bowers shading curious little shrines meet the eye everywhere. The white tables of the little shrines are loaded with gilt and tinselled offerings in immense variety. Curious bosses, like lace-pillows got up for church, swing pendent from the verdant pine-branches. The vast parish-church, of sombre gray masonry, flashing carnival-fires from the tin-plated pepper-boxes and slopes of its acre of roof, is receiving or disgorging a variegated multitude of good Catholics. Within, it is a mass of foliage, a wilderness of shrines, a cloud-land of incense. Long processions of maidens all in white, and others of maidens all in pale watchet-blue, are threading the principal streets. They are not _all_ very religious maidens, I am afraid; because, as sure as fate, one very young one of those robed in pure white "made eyes" at me as she passed. Now all this display in Quebec and its suburbs is set forth on a great scale and with bewildering turmoil; but if you want to see it in miniature presentment, you must pass down through St. Roch, and take the road to Lorette. Arrived among the _sauvages_,--for so the Canadian _habitant_ invariably calls his Indian brother, who is often as like him as one pea is like another,--you will there see the little old Huron church decked out in humble imitation of its younger, but bigger brothers in the city. The lanes between the log-houses are embowered in a modest way, and the drapery is eked out by many a yellow flannel petticoat and pair of scarlet leggings that dally riotously with each other in the breeze. The shrines are certainly less magnificent than those fairy bowers of the elf-land St. Roch, but there is a good deal of beaded peltry and bark-work about them, giving them, in a small way, the character of aboriginal bazaars. The Hurons are _bons Catholiques_, and everything connected with the _fête_ is conducted with a solemnity becoming the character of the Christian red man. So decorous, indeed, are the little _sauvagesses_ forming the miniature processions, that I do not remember ever detecting the eyes of any of them wandering and wantoning around, like those of the naughty little processional in white about whose conduct I just now complained.

The instinct of the French-Canadian for Indian trading has led one of that race to establish a general store close by the Huron village, though on the _habitant_ side of the stream. The gay printed cottons indispensable to the _belle sauvagesse_ are here to be found, as well as the blue blankets and the white, of so much account in the wardrobe of the women as well as of the men. Here, too, are to be had the assorted beads and silks and worsteds used in the embroidery of moccasons, epaulettes, and such articles; nor is the quality of the Cognac kept on hand by Joe for his customers to be characterized as despicable. Indeed, it would be hazardous to aver that anything is _not_ to be had, for the proper compensation, in Joe's establishment,--that is, anything that could possibly be required by the most exacting _sauvage_ or _sauvagesse_, from a strap of sleigh-bells to a red-framed looking-glass. Out of that store, too, comes a deal of the vivid drapery displayed upon the _Fête Dieu_, and much of the art-union resource combined in the attractive cheap lithograph element so edifying to the connoisseur.

I think it was one of those _fêtes_--if not, another bright summer holiday--that I once saw darkly disturbed in this quiet little hamlet. Standing upon the table-rock that juts out at the foot of the fall so as to half-bridge over the lower-most eddy, I saw a small object topple over the summit of the cascade. It was nothing but a common pail or stable-bucket, as I perceived, when it glided past, almost within arm's length of me, and disappeared down the winding gorge. When I went up again to the road, I saw a crowd of holiday people standing near the little inn. They were solemn and speechless, and, on approaching, I saw that they were gazing upon the body of a man, dead and sadly crushed and mutilated. He was a _calèche_-driver from Quebec, well known to the small community; and although it does not seem any great height from the roadway near the inn to the tumbled rocks by the river's edge just above the fall, yet it was a drop to mash and kill the poor fellow dead enough, when his foot slipped, as he descended the unsafe path to get water for his horse. A dweller in great cities--say, for instance, one who lives within decent distance of such a charming locality as that called the Five Points in New York--could hardly realize the amount of awe that an event so trifling as a sudden and violent death will spread over a primitive village community. This happened in the French division of the place, which, of course, was decorated to the utmost ability of the people in honor of the _fête_: and so palpable was the gloom cast over all by the circumstance, that the bright flannels flaunting from the _cordons_ stretched across the way seemed to darken into palls, and the gay red streamers must have appeared to the subdued carnival spirits as warning crape-knots on the door-handle of death.

I believe it is a maxim with the Italian connoisseur of art, that no landscape is perfect without one red spot to give value to its varieties of green. On this principle, let me break the monotony of this little rural sketch with the one touch of genuine American character that belonged to it at the time of which I speak. Let William Button be the one red spot that predominated vastly over the green influences by which he was surrounded. The little inn at Lorette was then kept by a worthy host bearing the above-mentioned name, which was dingily lettered out upon a swinging sign, dingily representing a trotting horse,--emblem as dear to the slow Canadian as to the fast American mind. William Button--known as Billy Button to hosts of familiar friends--was, I think, a Kentuckian by birth; a fact which might honestly account for his having come by the loss of an eye through some operation by which marks of violence had been left upon the surrounding tracts of his rugged countenance. He was a short, thick-set man, with bow-legs like those of a bull-terrier, and walked with a heavy lurch in his gait. William's head was of immense size in proportion to his stature. Indeed, that important joint of his person must have been a division by about two of what artists term heroic proportions, or eight heads to a height,--a standard by which Button was barred from being a hero, for his head could hardly have been much less than a fourth of his entire length. The expression of his face was remarkably typical of American humor and shrewdness, an effect much aided by the chronic wink afforded by his closed eye. How Button found his way to this remote spot would have been a puzzle to any person unfamiliar with American character. How he managed to live among and deal with and very considerably master a community speaking no language with which he was acquainted was more unaccountable still. The inn could not have been a very profitable speculation, in itself; but there was one room in it fitted out with a display of Indian manufactures,--some of the articles reposing in glass cases to protect them from hands and dust, others arranged with negligent regularity upon the walls. Out of these the landlord made a good penny, as he charged an extensive percentage upon the original cost,--that is, to strangers; but if you were in Button's confidence, then was there no better fellow to intrust with a negotiation for a pair of snow-shoes, or moose-horns, or anything else in that line of business. In the winter season he was a great instigator of moose- and caribou-expeditions to the districts where these animals abound, assembling for this purpose the best Indian hunters to be found in the neighborhood, and accompanying the party himself. Out of the spoils of these expeditions he sometimes made a handsome profit: a good pair of moose-horns, for instance, used to fetch from six to ten dollars; and there is always a demand for the venison in the Quebec market. The skins were manufactured into moccason-leather by Indian adepts whom Button had in his pay, and who worked for a very low rate of remuneration,--quite disproportioned, indeed, to the fancy prices always paid by strangers for the articles turned out by their hands.

The name "Billy Button" carries with it an association oddly corroborated by a story narrated of himself by the man of whom I am speaking. Of all the reminiscences connected with the illegitimate drama that have dwelt with me from my early childhood until now, not one is more vividly impressed upon my memory than that standard old comedy on horseback performed by circus-riders long since gone to rest, and entitled "Billy Button's Journey to Brentford." The hero of this pleasant horse-play was a tailor,--men following that useful trade being considered capable of affording more amusement in connection with horses than any others, excepting, perhaps, jolly mariners on a spree. The plot of the drama used to strike my young mind as being a "crib" from "John Gilpin"; but I forgave that, in consideration of the skilful manner in which the story was wrought out. With what withering contempt used I, brought up among horses and their riders, to jeer at the wretched attempts of the tailor to remain permanently upon any central point of the horse's spinal ridge! How cheerful my feelings, when that man of shreds and patches fell prostrate in the sawdust, where he lay grovelling until the next revolution of his noble steed, when the animal caught him up by the baggiest portion of the trousers and carried him round the arena as a terrier might a rat! But, oh, what mingled joy and admiration, when out from the worried mass of coats leaped the nimble rider, now no longer a miserable tailor, but a roseate young man in tights and spangles, featly posturing over all the available area of his steed, and "witching the world with noble horsemanship"!

All these memories crowded upon me with a tremendous shock the very first time I saw the name of William Button upon the dingy swinging sign. Afterwards, when I became intimate with that curious person, I discovered that he was a capital "whip,"--first-rate, indeed, as a driver of the fast trotting horse, as well as a good judge of that superior article. With respect to his experiences as a rider he was more reserved; and it was not until after I had known him a long time that he confided to me the particulars of a ride once taken by him, which bore, in its principal features, a singular resemblance to the one performed by his great name-sake of the sawdust-ring.

There is a pack of fox-hounds kept at Montreal, maintained chiefly by officers of the garrison, as a shadowy reminiscence, perhaps, of the real thing, which is essentially of insular Britain and of nowhere else. Button happened to go to Montreal, on one occasion, for the purpose of picking up a race-horse, I think, for the Quebec market. Somebody who used to ride with the hounds had a horse which he wanted to get rid of, on account of headstrong tendencies in general and inability to appreciate the advantages of a bit. I remember the animal well. He was a fiery chestnut, with white about the legs, and very good across a country so long as he was wanted to go; but no common power could stop him when once he began to do that. On this animal--"The Buffer," he was called--Button was persuaded to mount, "just to try him a little," his owner said; and by way of doing that with perfect freedom from restraint, they rode out to where the hounds were to throw off, a couple of miles from the city. Button used to say that the term "throw off," which was new to him in that application, haunted him all the way out, like a bad dream. It was a bag-fox day, I believe: that is, the hunt was provided with a trapped animal, brought upon the ground in a sack and let out when the proper time came,--a process known in sporting parlance as "shaking a fox." The usual amount of "law" having been conceded, the hounds were laid on, and went away, as Button said, like a fire-flake over a prairie. No sooner did "The Buffer" hear the cry of the pack, than he started forward with a suddenness and force by which his wretched rider was jerked back at least a foot behind the saddle, into which place of rest he never once again fell during his many vicissitudes of position in that ride. I have said that Button was bow-legged; and to that providential fact did he attribute the power by which he clung on to various parts of the steed during his wild career of perhaps a mile, but which seemed to the troubled senses of the rider not much less than fifty. It was providential for him, too, that the country was but sparsely intersected by fences, and those not of a very formidable character: nevertheless, at each of these the too confiding Button experienced a change of position, being, as he used to express it, "interjuiced forrard o' the saddle or back'ard o' the saddle, accordin' to the kind o' thing the hoss flew over, and one time booleyvusted right under the hoss, whar he hung on by the girth ontil another buck-jump sent him right side on ag'in; but never, on no account, did he touch leather ag'in in all that ride." And thus Billy Button might have ridden farther and fared worse, had he not seen a terrible fate staring him imminently in the face. The hounds had just entered a little grove of young pine-trees, which stood very close together, and bristled with sharp, jagged branches nearly to the root, after the manner of these children of the wood. At this place of torture "The Buffer" was rushing with all his might, Button being then situated upon his neck, in a position most convenient for being "skinned alive" by the trees, as he said, when a plunge made by the animal over a plashy pool transferred the rider to his tail, from which he "collapsed right down in a kind o' swoon, and when he come to, found himself settin' up to his elbows in muddy water, very solitary-like, and with a terrible stillness all around."--What became of "The Buffer" I forget, and also how Button got home; but he certainly did not ride. And he always wound up the narrative of his first and last fox-hunt by invoking terrible ends to himself, if ever he "threw leg over dog-hoss ag'in, to see a throw-off."

Button left Lorette about two years after I first became acquainted with him, and I next heard of him down at the rock-walled Saguenay, where he had gone into a speculation for supplying the Boston market with salmon. But horse-flesh seemed to be more palatable to him than fish; for, later still, I met him at Toronto, in Upper Canada, mounted upon a powerful dark brown stallion, and leading another, its exact counterpart.

"Hollo, Button!" said I, in response to his cheery, "How de dew?"--"On horseback again, I see; have you forgotten the Buffer-business, then?"

"Forgot the yaller cuss!" replied he. "No, Sir-ree! He hangs round me yet, like fever 'n' agur upon a ma'sh. But the critter I'm onto a'n't no dog-hoss, you may believe; he don't 'throw off' nor nothin', _he_ don't. Him and his mate here a'n't easy matched. I fetched 'em up from below on spec, and you can hev the span for a cool thousand on ice."

And this was the last I saw of Button, who was one of the strangest combinations of hotel-keeper, horse-jockey, Indian-trader, fish-monger, and alligator, I ever met.

Tradition still retains a hold upon the Hurons of Lorette, little as remains to them of the character and lineaments of the red man. A pitiable procession of their diluted "braves" may sometimes be seen in the streets of Quebec, on such distinguished occasions as the Prince's visit. But it is with a manifest consciousness of the ludicrous that these industrials now do their little drama of the war-dance and the oration and the council-smoke. That drama has degenerated into a very feeble farce now, and the actors in it would be quite outdone in their travesty by any average corps of "supes" at one of our theatres. By-and-by all this will have died out, and the "Indian side" of the stream at Lorette will be assimilated in all its features to the other. The moccason is already typifying the decadence of aboriginal things there. That article is now fitted with India-rubber soles for the Quebec demand,--a continuation of the sole running in a low strip round the edge of the foot. With the gradual widening of that strip, until the moccason of the red man has been clean obliterated from things that are by the India-rubber of the white, will the remnant of the Hurons have passed away with things that were. Verdict on the "poor Indian":--"Wiped out with an India-rubber shoe."

And then, in future generations, the tradition of Indian blood among Canadian families of dark complexion, along these ridges, will be about as vague as that of Spanish descent in the case of certain tribes of fishermen on the western coast of Ireland. From the assimilation already going on, however, it may be argued that the physical character of the Indian will be gradually merged and lost in that of the French colonist. The Hurons are described as having formerly been a people of large stature, while those of the present day in Lower Canada are usually rather undersized than otherwise, like their _habitant_ neighbors. As a race, the latter are below the middle stature, although generally of great bodily strength and endurance.

Physical size and grand proportions are looked upon by the French-Canadian with great respect. In all the cases of popular _émeutes_ that have from time to time broken out in Lower Canada, the fighting leaders of the people were exceptional men, standing head and shoulders over their confiding followers. Where gangs of raftsmen congregate, their "captains" may be known by superior stature. The doings of their "big men" are treasured by the French-Canadians in traditionary lore. One famous fellow of this governing class is known by his deeds and words to every lumberer and stevedore and timber-tower about Montreal and Quebec. This man, whose name was Joe Monfaron, was the bully of the Ottawa raftsmen. He was about six feet six inches high and proportionably broad and deep; and I remember how people would turn round to look after him, as he came pounding along Notre-Dame Street, in Montreal, in his red shirt and tan-colored _shupac_ boots, all dripping wet after mooring an acre or two of raft, and now bent for his ashore-haunts in the Ste.-Marie suburb, to indemnify himself with bacchanalian and other consolations for long-endured hardship. Among other feats of strength attributed to him, I remember the following, which has an old, familiar taste, but was related to me as a fact.

There was a fighting stevedore or timber-tower, I forget which, at Quebec, who never had seen Joe Monfaron, as the latter seldom came farther down the river than Montreal. This fighting character, however, made a custom of laughing to scorn all the rumors that came down on rafts, every now and then, about terrible chastisements inflicted by Joe upon several hostile persons at once. He, the fighting timber-tower, hadn't found his match yet about the lumber-coves at Quebec, and he only wanted to see Joe Monfaron once, when he would settle the question as to the championship of the rafts on sight. One day, a giant in a red shirt stood suddenly before him, saying,--

"You're Dick Dempsey, eh?"

"That's me," replied the timber-tower; "and who are you?"

"Joe Monfaron. I heard you wanted me,--here I am," was the Caesarean response of the great captain of rafts.

"Ah! you're Joe Monfaron!" said the bully, a little staggered at the sort of customer he saw before him. "I said I'd like to see you, for sure; but how am I to know you're the right man?"

"Shake hands, first," replied Joe, "and then you'll find out, may be."

They shook hands,--rather warmly, perhaps, for the timber-tower, whose features wore an uncertain expression during the operation, and who at last broke out into a yell of pain, as Joe cast him off with a defiant laugh. Nor did the bully wait for any further explanations; for, whether the man who had just brought the blood spouting out at the tips of his fingers was Joe Monfaron or not, he was clearly an ugly customer and had better be left alone.

There are several roads from Quebec to Lorette, all of them good for carriages except one, which, from its extreme destitution of every condition essential to easy locomotion on wheels, is called, in the expressive language of the French colonists, _La Misère_. And yet this is the only road which, from touching various points of the River St. Charles, affords the traveller compensating glimpses of the picturesque windings of that stream. The pedestrian, however, is the only kind of explorer who really sees a country and its people; and for him who is not too proud to walk, _La Misère_ is not so hard to bear as its name might imply.

If iron takes the romance out of things, in a general way, as I mentioned at the beginning of this article my impression that it rather does, I know not whether primitive Lorette has not become sadly vulcanized into prosaic progress by the grand system of water-works established there for the benefit of Quebec. Connected as it is, now, with the latter place, by seven miles of iron pipes, I would not undertake to say that it retains aught of the rustic simplicity of its greener days. Had the pipes been of wood, indeed, the place might yet have had a chance. To understand this, one should hear the French-Canadian expatiate upon the superiority of the wooden to the metal bridge. Five years ago, the road-trustees of Quebec undertook to span the Montmorency River, just above the great fall, with an iron suspension-bridge. This would shorten the road, they said, by some two or three hundred yards of divergence from the old wooden bridge higher up. They built their bridge, which looked like a spider's web spanning the verge of the stupendous cataract, when seen from the St. Lawrence below. It was opened to the public in April, 1856, but was little used for some days, as the conservative _habitans_, who had gone the crooked road over the wooden bridge all their lives, declined to see what advantage could be gained by taking to a straight one pontificed with iron. It had not been open a week, however, when, as two or three hurrying peasants were venturing it with their carts, it fell with a crash, and all were washed headlong in an instant over the precipice and into the boiling abyss below, from which not one vestige of their remains was ever returned for a sign to their awe-stricken friends. Supposing this bridge to be rebuilt,--which is not likely,--I do not believe that a _habitant_ of all that region could be got to cross it, even under the malediction, with bell, book, and candle, of his priest. And so the old wooden bridge flourishes, and the crooked road is travelled by gray-coated _cultivateurs_, whose forefathers went crooked in the same direction for several generations, mounted upon persevering ponies which wouldn't upon any account be persuaded into going straight.

A gleam of hope for Lorette flashes upon me since the above was written. On looking over a provincial paper, I find astounding rumors of ghosts appearing upon the track of a western railroad. Things clothed in the traditional white appear before the impartial cow-catcher, which divides them for the passage of the train, in the wake of which they immediately reappear in a full state of repair and posture of contempt. If this sort of thing goes on, what a splendid new field will be opened for the writer of romance!

Certainly, I do not yet see what antidote there is for the primitive and pastoral against seven miles of iron pipe; but it is cheerful to know that ghosts are beginning to come about railroads, and all may yet be well with Lorette.

BEHIND THE MASK.

It was an old, distorted face,--
An uncouth visage, rough and wild;
Yet from behind, with laughing grace,
Peeped the fresh beauty of a child.

And so contrasting, fair and bright,
It made me of my fancy ask
If half earth's wrinkled grimness might
Be but the baby in the mask.

Behind gray hairs and furrowed brow
And withered look that life puts on,
Each, as he wears it, comes to know
How the child hides, and is not gone.

For, while the inexorable years
To saddened features fit their mould,
Beneath the work of time and tears
Waits something that will not grow old!

And pain and petulance and care
And wasted hope and sinful stain
Shape the strange guise the soul doth wear,
Till her young life look forth again.

The beauty of his boyhood's smile,--
What human faith could find it now
In yonder man of grief and guile,--
A very Cain, with branded brow?

Yet, overlaid and hidden, still
It lingers,--of his life a part;
As the scathed pine upon the hill
Holds the young fibres at its heart.

And, haply, round the Eternal Throne,
Heaven's pitying angels shall not ask
For that last look the world hath known,
But for the face behind the mask!

DIAMONDS AND PEARLS.

We were lately lounging away a Roman morning among the gems in Castellani's sparkling rooms in the Via Poli. One of the treasures handed out for rapturous examination was a diamond necklace, just finished for a Russian princess, at the cost of sixty thousand dollars, and a set of pearls for an English lady, who must pay, before she bears her prize homeward, the sum of ten thousand dollars. Castellani junior, a fine, patriotic young fellow, who has since been banished for his liberal ideas of government, smiled as he read astonishment in our eyes, and proceeded forthwith to dazzle us still further with more gems of rarest beauty, till then hidden away in his strong iron boxes.

Castellani, father and son, are princes among jewellers, and deserve to be ranked as artists of a superior order. Do not fail to visit their charming apartments, as among the most attractive lesser glories, when you go to Rome. They have a grand way of doing things, right good to look upon; and we once saw a countrywoman of ours, who has written immortal words in the cause of freedom, made the recipient of a gem at their hands, which she cannot but prize as among the chief tributes so numerously bestowed in all parts of the Christian world where her feet have wandered.

Castellani's jeweller's shop has existed in Rome since the year 1814. At that time all the efforts of this artist (Castellani the elder) were directed to the imitation of the newest English and French fashions, and particularly to the setting of diamonds. This he continued till 1823. From 1823 to 1827 he sought aid for his art in the study of Technology. And not in vain; for in 1826 he read before the _Accademia dei Lincei_ of Rome, (founded by Federico Cesi,) a paper on the chemical process of coloring _a giallone_ (yellow) in the manufacture of gold, in which he announced some facts in the action of electricity, long before Delarive and other chemists, as noticed in the "Quarterly Journal of Science," Dec., 1828, No. 6, and the "Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève," 1829, Tom. xi. p. 84.

At this period Etruria began to lay open the treasures of her art. All were struck by the beauty of the jewels found in the tombs; but Castellani was the first who thought of reproducing some of them; and he did it to the great admiration of the amateurs, foremost among whom may be mentioned the Duke Don Michelangelo Caetani, a man of great artistic feeling, who aided by his counsels and his designs the _renaissance_ of Roman jewelry.

The discovery of the celebrated tomb Regulini-Galassi at Cervetri was an event in jewelry. The articles of gold found in it (all now in the Vatican) were diligently studied by Castellani, when called upon to appraise them. Comprehending the methods and the character of the work, he boldly followed tradition.

The discoveries of Campanari of Toscanella, and of the Marquis Campana of Rome, gave valuable aid to this new branch of art.

Thus it went on improving; and Castellani produced very expert pupils, all of them Italians. Fashion, if not public feeling, came to aid the _renaissance_, and others, in Rome and elsewhere, undertook similar work after the models of Castellani. It may be asserted that the triumph of the classic jewelry is now complete. Castellani renounced the modern methods of chasing and engraving, and adhered only to the antique fashion of overlaying with cords, grains, and finest threads of gold. From the Etruscan style he passed to the Greek, the Roman, the Christian. In this last he introduced the rough mosaics, such as were used by the Byzantines with much effect and variety of tint and of design.

The work of Castellani is dear; but that results from his method of execution, and from the perfect finish of all the details. He does not seek for cheapness, but for the perfection of art: this is the only thing he has in view. As he is a man of genius, we have devoted considerable space to his admirable productions.

The Talmud informs us that Noah had no other light in the ark than that which came from precious stones. Why do not our modern jewellers take a hint from the ancient safety-boat, and light up accordingly? We dare say old Tavernier, that knowing French gem-trader of the seventeenth century, had the art of illuminating his château at Aubonne in a way wondrous to the beholder. Among all the jewellers, ancient or modern, Jean Baptiste Tavernier seems to us the most interesting character. His great knowledge of precious stones, his acute observation and unfailing judgment, stamp him as one of the remarkable men of his day. Forty years of his life he passed in travelling through Turkey, Persia, and the East Indies, trading in gems of the richest and rarest lustre. A great fortune was amassed, and a barony in the Canton of Berne, on the Lake of Geneva, was purchased as no bad harbor for the rest of his days. There he hoped to enjoy the vast wealth he had so industriously acquired. But, alas! stupid nephews abound everywhere; and one of his, to whom he had intrusted a freight worth two hundred and twenty thousand livres, caused him so great a loss, that, at the age of eighty-four, he felt obliged to sail again for the East in order to retrieve his fortune, or at least repair the ill-luck arising from his unfortunate speculation. He forgot, poor old man! that youth and strength are necessary to fight against reverses; and he died at Moscow, on his way, in 1689. When you visit the great Library in Paris, you will find his "Travels," in three volumes, published in 1677-79, on a shelf among the quartos. Take them down, and spend a pleasant hour in looking through the pages of the enthusiastic old merchant-jeweller. His adventures in search of diamonds and other precious commodities are well told; and although he makes the mistakes incident to many other early travellers, he never wilfully romances. He supposed he was the first European that had explored the mines of Golconda; but an Englishman of the name of Methold visited them as early as 1622, and found thirty thousand laborers working away for the rich Marcandar, who paid three hundred thousand pagodas annually to the king for the privilege of digging in a single mine. The first mine visited by Tavernier was that of Raolconda, a five-days' journey from Golconda. The manner of trading there he thus describes:--

"A very pretty sight is that presented every morning by the children of the master-miners and of other inhabitants of the district. The boys, the eldest of which is not over sixteen or the youngest under ten, assemble and sit under a large tree in the public square of the village. Each has his diamond weight in a bag hung on one side of his girdle, and on the other a purse containing sometimes as much as five or six hundred pagodas. Here they wait for such persons as have diamonds to sell, either from the vicinity or from any other mine. When a diamond is brought to them, it is immediately handed to the eldest boy, who is tacitly acknowledged as the head of this little band. By him it is carefully examined, and then passed to his neighbor, who, having also inspected it, transmits it to the next boy. The stone is thus passed from hand to hand, amid unbroken silence, until it returns to that of the eldest, who then asks the price and makes the bargain. If the little man is thought by his comrades to have given too high a price, he must keep the stone on his own account. In the evening the children take account of stock, examine their purchases, and class them according to their water, size, and purity, putting on each stone the price they expect to get for it; they then carry the stones to the masters, who have always assortments to complete, and the profits are divided among the young traders, with this difference in favor of the head of the firm, that he receives one-fourth per cent. more than the others. These children are so perfectly acquainted with the value of all sorts of gems, that, if one of them, after buying a stone, is willing to lose one-half per cent. on it, a companion is always ready to take it."

Master Tavernier discourses at some length on the ingenious methods adopted by the laborers to conceal diamonds which they have found, sometimes swallowing them,--and he tells of one miner who hid in the corner of his eye a stone of two carats! Altogether, his work is one worthy to be turned over, even in that vast collection, the Imperial Library, for its graphic pictures of gem-hunting two hundred years ago.

Professor Tennant says, "One of the common marks of opulence and taste in all countries is the selection, preservation, and ornamental use of gems and precious stones." Diamonds, from the time Alexander ordered pieces of flesh to be thrown into the inaccessible valley of Zulmeah, that the vultures might bring up with them the precious stones which attached themselves, have everywhere ranked among the luxuries of a refined cultivation. It is the most brilliant of stones, and the hardest known body. Pliny says it is so hard a substance, that, if one should be laid on an anvil and struck with a hammer, look out for the hammer! [_Mem_. If the reader have a particularly fine diamond, never mind Pliny's story: the risk is something, and Pliny cannot be reached for an explanation, should his experiment fail.] By its own dust only can the diamond be cut and polished; and its great lustre challenges the admiration of the world. Ordinary individuals, with nothing to distinguish them from the common herd, have "got diamonds," and straightway became ever afterwards famous. An uncommon-sized brilliant, stuck into the front linen of a foolish fellow, will set him up as a marked man, and point him out as something worth looking at. The announcement in the papers of the day, that "Mademoiselle Mars would wear all her diamonds," never failed to stimulate the sale of tickets on all such occasions. As it may interest our readers to know what treasures an actress of 1828 possessed, we copy from the catalogue of her effects a few items.