Canada and the Canadians Volume I Part 16

The Falls of St. Marie are celebrated as a fis.h.i.+ng place; and the white fish caught there are reckoned superior to those taken in any other part of Lake Huron. The fishery is picturesque enough, and is carried on in canoes, manned usually by two Indians or half-breeds, who paddle up the rapids as far as practicable. The one in the bow has a scoop-net, which he dips, as soon as one of these glittering fish is observed, and lands him into the canoe. Incredible numbers of them are taken in this simple manner; but it requires the canoemans.h.i.+p and the eye of an Indian.

The French still show their national characteristics in this remote place. They first settled here before the year 1721, as Charlevoix states; and, in 1762, Henry, a trader on Lake Huron, found them established in a stockaded fort, under an officer of the French army.

The Jesuits visited Lake Superior as early as 1600; and in 1634 they had a rude chapel, the first log hut built so far from civilization, in this wilderness. At present, the population are French, Upper Canadians, English, Scotch, Yankees, Indians, half-breeds.

The climate is healthy, very cold in winter, with a short but very warm summer, and always a pure air. Here the Aurora Borealis is seen in its utmost glory. In summer there is scarcely any night; for the twilight lasts until eleven o'clock, and the tokens of the returning sun are visible two hours afterwards.

The extremes of civilized and savage life meet at St. Mary's; for here live the educated European or American, and the pure heathen Red Man; here steamboats and the birch canoe float side by side; and here all-powerful Commerce is already recommencing a deadly rivalry between the Briton and the American, not for furs and peltry, as in days gone by, but for copper and for metals; and here a new world is about to be opened, and that too very speedily.

Here are Indian agents and missionaries, with schools, both the English and the United States' government considering the entrance to the Red Man's country, whose gates are so narrow and still closed up, to be of very great importance, both in a commercial and a political point of view; but it is notorious that, after the French Canadians, the Red Man prefers his Great Mother beyond the Great Lake and her subjects to the President and the people, who are rather too near neighbours to be pleasant, and who have somewhat unceremoniously considered the natives of the soil as so many obstacles to their aggrandizement.

I shall end this sketch of the lakes, by a few observations upon the magnetic phenomena regarding them, and respecting the variation of the compa.s.s.

Fort Erie, near the eastern termination of Lake Erie, and close to the Niagara river, presents the line of no variation; whilst at the town of Niagara, on the south-west end of Lake Ontario, not more than thirty-six miles from Fort Erie, the variation in 1832 was 1 20' east.

The line of no variation is marked distinctly on the best maps of Canada, by the division line between the towns.h.i.+ps of Stamford and Niagara, seven miles north of Niagara.

At Toronto in 43 39' north lat.i.tude, and 78 4' west longitude, twenty-four miles north-east of Niagara, the variation in 1832 was more than 2 easterly.

The sh.o.r.e of Lake Huron at Nottawa.s.saga Bay, forty miles north-west of Toronto, is again the line of no variation.

Thus a magnetic meridian lies between Fort Erie and Nottawa.s.saga.

A magnetic observatory is established by the Board of Ordnance at Toronto, near the University, and placed in charge of two young officers of artillery, which says a good deal for the scientific acquirements of that corps. I shall perhaps hereafter advert to this subject more at large, as the volcanic rocks have much to do with the needle in Canada West.

END OF VOL. I.

Frederick Shoberl, Junior, Printer to His Royal Highness Prince Albert.

51, Rupert Street, Haymarket, London.