Canada and the Canadians Volume Ii Part 12

The ordinary costs of a suit before him are from 5 to 10; and in the Queen's Bench, before a _real_ judge, from 10 to 30.

The Division Courts are a sort of non-descript Courts of Conscience for recovery of small debts under 10; and here the district judge has his hands full, for he comes into play as president again, and has to hold courts in six divisions of his district once in two months.

The Court of Chancery is the _summum bonum_; its costs are, of course, very great, and its decisions, though not quite so protracted as those of England, nor involving such stakes, plague many a poor suitor who comes to _equity_, when he can no longer get justice. I should most strongly advise him to ponder deeply, after wading through Division, District, and Queen's Bench, through judges without a wig and gown to judges in full paraphernalia, and barristers and attorneys without end, before he encounters a Master in Chancery. It may be such a lesson as he will never forget, for Canada is rather a litigious country--it is too near the States to be otherwise, and lawyers, as well as all other trades and professions, must live. Young settler, stick to your farm, get a clear t.i.tle to your land, and never get into debt.

I left Kingston in autumn, as aforesaid, with the farm stock and implements, and embarked on board the Prince Edward steamboat, Captain Bouter, for the mouth of the river Trent, in the Bay of Quinte.

First you steam along the front of the famous city of Kingston, which now presents something of an imposing front, from the waters of the St. Lawrence, which here leave Lake Ontario and contract into two channels between which are Long Island and some others. The channel nearest to the United States is very narrow, or about a mile; that on the Canada side is very broad, being from three to five or six, with an islet or rock in the centre of the mouth or opening of Lake Ontario, called Snake Island, having one tree upon it, and visible from a great distance.

A few miles above Kingston, you enter the Bay of Quinte by pa.s.sing between the main land and Amherst Isle, or the Isle of Tanti, owned by Lord Mountcash.e.l.l, on which are now extensive and flouris.h.i.+ng farms.

At the east end of the Isle of Tanti are the Lower Gap and the Brothers, two rocky islets famous for black ba.s.s fis.h.i.+ng and for a deep rolling sea, which makes a landsman very sick indeed in a gale of wind. After pa.s.sing this Scylla, the bay, an arm rather of Lake Ontario, becomes very smooth and peaceable for several miles, until you leave the pleasant little village of Bath, where is one of the first churches erected by the English settlers in Western Canada, and the beginning of the granary of the Canadas.

After pa.s.sing Bath, the Upper Gap Charybdis gives you another tremendous rolling in blowing weather, and the expanse of Lake Ontario is seen to the left, with the tortuous bay of Quinte again to the right; this arm of the lake being made for fifty or sixty miles more by the fertile district of Prince Edward, an island of great extent, and one of the oldest of the British settlements in Upper Canada, where Pomona and Ceres reign paramount; for all is fertility.

The Bay of Quinte, in fact, on both the main sh.o.r.e and on Prince Edward, is one unvaried scene of the labours of the husbandman; for the forest is rapidly disappearing there, and the luxuriance of the scenery in harvest can only be compared with the best parts of England. It is indeed a glad and a rich country.

The Lake of the Mountain and the Indian village of Tyandinaga are the lions of this route: the former, a singular crater full of the purest water, on the summit of a hill of some alt.i.tude, without any apparent source, but overflowing in a stream sufficient for mill purposes and very deep; the latter the seat of a portion of the Mohawks already mentioned.

The vessel calls at several small settlements, and stops for the night at Hallowell or Picton, for the village has both names. This is a most picturesque locality, in a nook of the bay, with undulating hills and sharp ravines, a handsome church and other public edifices, and a large and thriving population. But we must for the present keep on board the steamer, and, after sleeping there, go on to Belleville, leaving Fredericksburgh, Adolphus Town, and many others in the Midland, to coast the Victoria district, and enter the charming little retreats in this pleasant bay to be described more at leisure.

Belleville, the county town of the Victoria district, is situated on the sh.o.r.es of this bay, and, from an insignificant village in 1837, has risen in 1846 to the rank of a large and flouris.h.i.+ng town, the main street of which surprised me not a little by its extent, the beauty of its buildings, and the display of its shops. I mounted the hill-side which overlooks it, and there saw three fine churches, the English, Roman Catholic, and Scotch places of wors.h.i.+p, a large well built court-house and jail, and some pretty country-houses. I should think that Belleville has nearly four thousand inhabitants; and, as it is the outlet of a rich back country, and on the main road from Kingston to Toronto, it will increase most rapidly. The worst feature about Belleville in 1837 was that it was the focus of American saddle-bag preachers, teachers, and rebelliously disposed folks; but I am told that most of these uneasy loafers have left it, and that its character has improved wonderfully. What a nuisance are peddling, meddling, politicians of the lowest grade? Wherever they plant their feet, a moral pestilence follows. These fellows won't work, for the voluntary principle in preaching or teaching pays better, and does not cost so much trouble. It is surprising with what facility, in England, as well as in Canada, a saddle-bag doctor of divinity takes his degree, and becomes possessor of the secrets and director of the consciences and household of the small farmer. I once knew a family, a most respectable family of yeomen, of ancient descent and of excellent hearts, devoured by a locust of this kind in Buckinghams.h.i.+re. In Canada they are devoured every day, and not unfrequently made disloyal into the bargain, although deriving their lands and support originally from the British government.

They travel to the most remote settlements, where no such opportunities as church or chapel of any kind exist for public wors.h.i.+p; and, after gaining the good opinion of the simple settler by an exterior sanct.i.ty and a snuffling expression of it, they soon slide into the recommendation of the superior chances of salvation that offer themselves, by forgetting the Divine command of "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's," and of the Apostolic doctrine of "Honour the King." I have always been surprised that a democratic Bible retains such highly improper translations of the original tongue, as _prince_, _king_, _queen_, and conceive that there should be a special Act of Congress to declare that henceforward the words of the English language should be abolished and the American tongue subst.i.tuted, under pains and penalties, omitting the aforesaid and all other similar _obnoxiosities_ from dictionary, grammar, and book. The Americans have just discovered that they have a prior claim to Oregon, and therefore must be an older nation than the British, the separation being a mere trifle, and the sway of England over the thirteen colonies and her ancient settlement of America a dream; ergo, the American language is the primitive tongue. A very excellent worthy gentleman of New York wrote to a friend in Kingston lately, stating that he was sorry that England was going to such an expense in fortifying that town, as it and all Canada would soon be American, and then the money thrown away would be missed.[1]

[Footnote 1: In crossing the Atlantic in an American packet with a highly-gifted American, he told me one day that he was really glad to observe that such excellent dockyards were making at Bermuda, as in a few years they would no doubt belong to the Union. This was not said boastingly, but seriously.]

It is actually astonis.h.i.+ng, and will scarcely be credited at home, that all except the most reflecting people in the United States have, within the last five years, become really and seriously impressed with the notion that the whole continent of the New World is a part of their birthright, and that it is about to pa.s.s under their dominion, as a matter of course, as well as that all the powers of the Old World cannot hinder this consummation one day, or even exist themselves much longer, as a political millennium is speedily coming on.

As an example of the self-sufficiency of this feeling, I quote a letter from a governor of a State, lately written to his const.i.tuents, perhaps on the strength of re-election, but really developing the national notion. In reply to a letter addressed to him by the whigs of Chautauque county, desiring his consent to stand as one of their candidates for the delegates to the Const.i.tutional Convention, ex-Governor Seward wrote a reply of which the following is an extract:--

"I want no war--I want no enlargement of territory sooner than it would come if we were contented with a masterly inactivity. I abhor war, as I detest slavery. I would not give one human life for all the continent that remains to be _annexed_.

"But I cannot exclude the conviction that the popular pa.s.sion for territorial aggrandizement is irresistible. Prudence, justice, cowardice, may check it for a season, but it will gain strength by its subjugation. An American navy is hovering over Vera Cruz. An American army is at the heart of what was Mexico. Let the Oregon question be settled when it may, it will, nevertheless, come back again. Our population is destined to roll its resistless waves to the icy barriers of the north, and to encounter oriental civilization on the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific. The monarchs of Europe are to have no rest, while they have a colony remaining on this continent. France has already sold out. Spain has sold out. We shall see how long before England inclines to follow their example. It behoves us then to qualify ourselves for our mission. We must dare our destiny. We can do this, and can only do it by early measures which shall effect the abolition of slavery, without precipitancy, without oppression, without injustice to slaveholders, without civil war, with the consent of mankind, and the approbation of Heaven. The restoration of the right of suffrage to free men is the first act, and will draw after it in due time the sublime catastrophe of emanc.i.p.ation."

It is with nations as it is with individuals; a boy very soon fancies himself a man; he takes a switch in his hand, rides a muck against thistles and stinging nettles, cuts off their heads, might and main, and then fancies himself a Wellington or a Nelson. Young nations have the same notions, and age tames both the one and the other.

Texas was easily tampered with; it was peopled only to be the People's: but Mexico may be a harder bone to pick. Already is a newspaper published there, named _El Tiemps, The Times_, to advocate a return to monarchy, in order to save the Spanish race from the Stars and the Stripes; and the besotted and wretched Republics of the South, conceived in folly, and born of the splendid dream of Canning, are falling to pieces from internal wars. Will his Ophirian Majesty, the Emperor of Brazil, humbly lay his crown at the feet of the Eagle, and are all our West India islands to be sipped up in the spoon of the President?

Let the United States be a great, a free, and an enlightened Republic; no one in England desires otherwise. Let it hold the balance, to curb the semi-barbarous States of South America, and let it spread the gospel of peace, and the literature and laws of Britain to the uttermost parts of that benighted region; but also let it curb itself in time, before it seeks to overthrow all order, all rule, all right, and all reason, under the feet of its mere fancied might.

There is not in England that hatred of its American offspring, which exists so largely towards the Parent State in the Union; on the contrary, there is an earnest, a sincere desire for the well-being and advancement of its best interests; but it is useless to conceal, and it would be unmanly also to attempt to do so, that the British pulse does not beat in unison with Lynch law, or with mob-rule, any more than it would with the tyranny of a despotism; neither will the honest pride of the English, the Irish, or the Scotch, permit that mob dominion, the might of the ma.s.s, to dictate a line of conduct upon any question, territorial or gubernative. Many master-minds at home admire the principles of the American const.i.tution, as established by Was.h.i.+ngton; but they deeply regret the gulf that has opened since the era of that lawgiver; and there are few indeed who would dream even of exchanging the freedom of England for the freedom of the United States.

The Reformers of British origin in Canada are, no doubt, very numerous; and, owing to misconception and other causes, with which the public are now acquainted, were once desirous of hoisting a new flag; but time and reflection have been at work since, and the term reformer in Canada is no longer one with which a word of fewer syllables is synonymous. Even during the rebellion, as it was called, of 1837, but which more properly should be called the border troubles, there were very few Upper or Western Canadians concerned, as the brigands were chiefly American borderers; the real rebellion being confined to Lower Canada. I commanded a very large body of militia, much of which had been gathered from the districts and counties where the Reformers had their strongholds, and in the ranks there were full as many Reformers as there were Tories, as the other party were then called.

These subjects force themselves upon my attention, from the voyage near the sh.o.r.es of Sydney, Thurlow, and other towns.h.i.+ps, where Reformers and the really disaffected were very numerous in 1837; but, notwithstanding all this, it may be freely and fairly a.s.serted again and again, that, let an invading force appear on their soil, the people of Canada will fight for home, for liberty, and for Queen Victoria.

We steamed on to the Trent river through a glorious corn and apple country, and arrived there in time to meet my young friend, and to proceed in our waggon to Brighton, a few miles westward on the Toronto road, where we slept.

Trent Port, or Trent village, is situated on both banks of the exitus of the Trent river into the Bay of Quinte, and is remarkable for two things: as being the intended outlet of one of the finest back countries in Canada, by a gigantic ca.n.a.l, which was to open Lake Huron to Ontario, through a succession of inland lakes and rivers, but which n.o.ble scheme was nipped in the bud after several of the locks had been excavated, and very many thousands of pounds expended. It is now remarkable only for its long, covered wooden bridge, and the quant.i.ty of lumber, _i.e._, in the new American Dictionary, deals, plank, staves, square timber, and logs floating on the tranquil water for exportation.

Brighton is a little pleasant high-road hamlet, with two inns, and no outs, as it is not a place of trade, excepting as far as a small sawmill is concerned; but this will change, for it is near Presqu'ile, the only natural harbour on Lake Ontario's Canada sh.o.r.e, from Toronto to Kingston, or from one end to the other. Here the Bay of Quinte approaches the lake so close, that a ca.n.a.l of four or five miles only is requisite, through a natural level, in order to have a safe and sheltered voyage from Kingston without going at all into the real and dangerous lake, which is every where beset with "ducks and drakes," as its rocky and treacherous islets are called.

This ca.n.a.l, which may be constructed easily for about five and twenty thousand pounds, must soon be made, and the bar of Presqu'ile Harbour deepened, so as to ensure a shelter for vessels in the furious gales of October and November.

The ca.n.a.l is always traced on maps, and called Murray Ca.n.a.l, I presume, after the late Master-General of the Ordnance, during his government of the province. It is, without doubt, one of the most important and necessary works in Canada West; and, as it will lead into the Trent navigation, when that shall be finished, will be the means of adding some millions of inhabitants to the fairest portion of the land, now known only to wretched lumbermen.

The River Trent is a large stream, full of shallows, and rapids, and beautiful lakes, taking its rise north of the towns.h.i.+p of Somerville, in the Colborne District, not very far from a chain of lakes, which reach the Ottawa on the east, and the Black River, a feeder of Lake Simcoe, and a tributary of Huron and the Severn, on the west.

The river Trent is strangely tortuous, but keeps almost entirely within the Colborne district, named after Lord Seaton, and at Rice Lake afforded a site for the Colonial Office to establish a flouris.h.i.+ng colony a few years ago at Peterborough, and to open an entirely new and very rich portion of Canada West.

This river, placed, as it were, by Nature as the connecting link of a great chain of inland navigation, embracing the expanse of Huron, Ontario, and the Ottawa, opens a field of research both to the agriculturist and the forester. The woods abound with the finest kind of untouched timber; the land is fertile in the extreme; and the rivers, streams, and lakes abound with fish. In short, had the Trent Ca.n.a.l been finished, instead of the miserable and decaying timber-slides, which now enc.u.mber that n.o.ble river, another million of inhabitants would, in ten years more, have filled up the forests, which are now only penetrated by the Indian or the seeker after timber.

A private individual has, however, put a steamboat upon the centre of the river's course; and Mr. Weller, no doubt, finds that it pays him well, for the portion of Colborne district near Rice Lake is settling rapidly.

The Trent Ca.n.a.l, or a railroad, in the same direction, would lead to the Georgian Bay of Huron, and thus render a journey to the far West easy of accomplishment, as it is the most direct route from Oswego and New York.

But I must journey on, and, after resting at Brighton, start by daylight, and penetrate into the bowels of the land by a sandy road, which, after pa.s.sing that village, stretches into the forest due north.

Away the waggon went, not at a hand-gallop, for the sand was too deep for that, and, pa.s.sing through woods by a tolerably good road for so new a settlement, we, every now and then, at intervals few and far between, saw a new farm or a new log-hut.

The day was fine, and so, having carried our provision with us, we halted in the deep woods, upon the muddy banks of the Cold Creek, to breakfast. A Tartar camp was visited by an English traveller somewhere in the dominions of the Grand Lama, and he was treated to London porter. So were we in the deep forest of Central Canada, for London porter appears to travel everywhere; and, discussing it with much relish, we fed the horses, and gave them what they liked much better, clear and pure water--which indeed I now think would have been quite as good for us--and waggoned on, until we came to a surprising new settlement in the Bush, the villages of Percy and Percy Landing, where, there being mill "privileges," as a sharp running water-stream is called in the United States, flour and saw-mills have been established, and a very thriving population is rising both in numbers and in means. Here we dined in a new inn, or rather tavern, kept by a French Canadian, and then pursued our journey for a few miles on a decent new road, amidst fine settlements and good farms, and, crossing a beautiful stream, plunged into the undisturbed forest by a road in which every rut was a ca.n.a.l, and every stone as big as a bomb-sh.e.l.l at the very least. How the waggon stood it, and the roots and stumps of the trees with which these boulders were diversified, I am still unable to explain; for my part, I walked the greater part of it, for the bones of my body seemed as if they were very likely, after a short trial, to part company with each other.

At length, after jolting, jumping, complaining, and comforting, we came to a bridge near Myer's Mills. Our _conducteur_, my young friend aforesaid, who was more used to the road, saw at a glance that something had gone wrong with the said bridge; for it exhibited a very disorderly, drunken sort of devil-may-care aspect.

He was too far advanced upon it to retreat, when he discovered that a beam or two had departed into the lively current below. With true backwoodsman's energy, he pulled his horses up sharp, reined them well up, and then, with a tremendous shout, applied the whip, and actually leaped horses, waggon, and pa.s.sengers over the chasm, the remainder of the bridge groaning, and saying most plainly, "I will not bear this any longer." Next morning, we heard that the whole structure had fallen in and disappeared.

I have been in some danger in the course of my life; but a visit afterwards to this spot convinced me that one's existence is often a sort of size-ace throw; and whether the six or the one comes up or goes down, is a miracle. I never had a nearer leap for clearing Styx than this, excepting one shortly afterwards upon the timber-slides of the Trent, at Healy's Falls.

A vast timber ca.n.a.l or way had been constructed here by the Board of Works, to convey timber down a rapid without danger, the slide being alongside of that rapid. It was an interesting work; and, with my young friend and two naval officers, settled in Seymour, I went to examine it. At the sluice-way, or timber-dam, was a sort of bridge, composed of parallel pieces of heavy square joists and a platform; we walked along this Mahomet's railway, where Azrael seemed to have established pretty much the same sentry as Cerberus, having two or three mouths ready to devour the adventurous pa.s.senger.

The parallel pieces were about two feet distant from each other; I walked on one, and my companions on the other, until a good view of the whole work and the splendid rapids was attained. Under our feet, at some distance, was the water of the slide running on an inclined plane of woodwork, at a great angle, and with enormous power and velocity into a pitch or cauldron far below.

The day was bright, and the shadow of the parallel logs left between the s.p.a.ce no view of the water underneath. They called me suddenly to look at the rapid. I jumped, as I thought, over the s.p.a.ce between us; but my jump was into the shadow. One of the naval officers, a powerful man, six feet and more in height, saw me jump; and, just as I was disappearing between the timbers, caught me by the arm, and, by sheer muscle and strength, held me in mid-air. The other immediately a.s.sisted him, but my young friend became deadly pale and sick. I did not visit either the slide or the cauldron; in either, instantaneous and suffocating death was inevitable. Reader, never leap in dark places, and look before you leap. My young friend looked before he leaped over the bridge with his span of horses, and, like a gallant _auriga_, guided his van without fear; but he told me afterwards that the cold sweat sat on his brow, when the chasm was cleared, as much on the bridge as it did at my Quintus Curtius venture. By the by, did Quinte Curce, as the French so adroitly call him, ever leap--I doubt the fact--into the chasm which closed over him?

After pa.s.sing this bridge, and a slough of despond beyond it, we again plunged into the woods, and, mounting over boulders, sinking into bog-holes, and fairly jolted to jelly, on a sudden turned into an open s.p.a.ce of near a hundred acres, round which the solemn and stately forest kept eternal guard. Here, in the s.p.a.ce of ten or twelve years, our pioneer friends had laboured through weal and through woe, through Siberian winters and West Indian summers, through ague and fever, to create a little modern paradise.

My young friend commenced in this secluded region, where the outer barbarian was never seen and seldom heard of, where even the troubles of 1837-8 never showed themselves, his location upon one hundred acres. He had received the very best education which a public inst.i.tution in England could afford; but circ.u.mstances obliged him, at the early age of twenty-five, to turn his thoughts, with a young wife, to "life in the Bush," as a sole provision. The partner of his cares, equally well educated, and of an ancient family, by the death of her father, who was high in office in his country's service, was left equally unprovided for.

With youth and good const.i.tutions, a determination to make their own way in life spurred them on to the most disheartening task, a task which thousands of young people from Britain have, however, daily to encounter in Canada, and the progress of which I relate simply from a desire to show that "life in the Bush" is not to be entered into without solemn and serious reflection.

Their first undertaking was to clear an acre or two of the forest, and crop it with grain and potatoes; then to build a log-house. In all this they were a.s.sisted by friends and neighbours as far as the limited means of those friends and neighbours, who were all similarly engaged, and the settlement containing not more than four or five families, would admit of.

My young friend really set his shoulder to the wheel, and did not call upon Hercules whiningly. He had a fondness for carpenter's work, and, having cut down the huge pine trees on his _lot_, for so a property is called in Canada West, he hewed them, squared them, and dovetailed them; he quarried stone with infinite toil, burnt lime, and in the short s.p.a.ce of two years had a decent log-palace, consisting of two large rooms, and a kitchen and cellar, with an excellent chimney, a well which he dug himself, and a very large framed barn, which he built himself, the only outlay being for nails, s.h.i.+ngles to cover his roofs, and boards. These he had to bring with oxen and a waggon from the saw-mills at Percy, many miles off, and by the most hideous road I ever saw, even in Canada. He split his own rails, made his own fences, and cleared his own forest. This first settlement was commenced in 1840, and, when I saw it in 1845, he had nearly thirty acres cleared, and this clearance and his really good house let to a settler just arrived.

By one of those freaks of fortune unforeseen and unaccountable, a connexion, who occupied the adjacent farm of two hundred acres, and had had the command of money, died, and his property was left to the young couple.

This gentleman, in the course of six or seven years, from the first settlement of this portion of Canada, had built an excellent house, had cleared a hundred acres, had a good garden, and everything which a settler could desire, with a well-stocked farm-yard, and a well-furnished house, into which my young friend stepped from his log-palace and became monarch of all he surveyed.

But money, the sinews of war, was wanted; for, although the land, house, goods, and chattels became his, the funds went to another person, all but a trifling annual sum.