Part 7

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.

They consist at present of two thousand five hundred, out of the seven or eight thousand who first settled here. Here, as everywhere else, the decrease of the Indian population settled on the reserved lands is uniform. The white population throughout America is supposed to double itself on an average in twenty-three years; in about the same proportion do the Indians perish before them.

The interests and property of these Indians are at present managed by the Government. The revenue arising from the sale of their lands is in the hands of commissioners, and much is done for their conversion and civilisation. It will, however, be the affair of two, or three, or more generations; and by that time not many, I am afraid, will be left. Consumption makes dreadful havoc among them. At present they have churches, schools, and an able missionary who has studied their language, besides several resident Methodist preachers. Of the two thousand five hundred already mentioned, the far greater part retain their old faith and customs, having borrowed from the whites only those habits which certainly "were more honoured in the breach than in the observance." I saw many of these people, and spoke to some, who replied with a quiet, self-possessed courtesy, and in very intelligible English. One group which I met outside the town, consisting of two young men in blanket coats and leggings, one haggard old woman, with a man's hat on her head, a blue blanket and deer-skin moccasins, and a very beautiful girl, apparently not more than fifteen, similarly dressed, with long black hair hanging loose over her face and shoulders, and a little baby, many shades fairer than herself, peeping from the folds of her blanket behind,--altogether reminded me of a group of gipsies, such as I have seen on the borders of Sherwood Forest many years ago.

BRANDTFORD.

The Grand River is navigable for steam-boats from Lake Erie up to the landing-place, about two miles below Brandtford, and from thence a canal is to be cut, some time or other, to the town. The present site of Brandtford was chosen on account of those very rapids which do indeed obstruct the navigation, but turn a number of mills, here of the first importance. The usual progress of a Canadian village is this: first, on some running stream, the erection of a saw-mill and grist-mill for the convenience of the neighbouring scattered settlers; then a few shanties or log-houses for the work-people; then a grocery-store; then a tavern--a chapel--perchance a school-house.

Not having been properly forewarned, I unfortunately allowed the driver to take me to a wrong inn. I ought to have put up at the Mansion-house, well kept by a retired half-pay British officer; instead of which I was brought to the Commercial Hotel, newly undertaken by an American. I sent to the landlord to say I wished to speak to him about proceeding on my journey next day. The next moment the man walked into my bed-room without hesitation or apology. I was too much accustomed to foreign manners to be greatly discomfited; but when he proceeded to fling his hat down on my bed, and throw himself into the only arm-chair in the room, while I was standing, I must own I did look at him with some surprise. To those who have been accustomed to the almost servile courtesy of English innkeepers, the manners of the innkeepers in the United States are not pleasant. I cannot say they ever discomposed me: I always met with civility and attention; but the manners of the country innkeepers in Canada are worse than anything you can meet with in the United States, being generally kept by refugee Americans of the lowest class, or by Canadians who, in affecting American manners and phraseology, grossly exaggerate both.

In the present case I saw at once that no incivility was intended; my landlord was ready at a fair price to drive me over himself, in his own "wagon," to Woodstock; and after this was settled, finding, after a few questions, that the man was really a most stupid, ignorant fellow, I turned to the window, and took up a book, as a hint for him to be gone. He continued, however, to lounge in the chair, rocking himself in silence to and fro, till at last he _did_ condescend to take my hint, and to take his departure.

* * * * *

At ten o'clock next morning, a little vehicle, like that which brought me from Hamilton, was at the door; and I set off for Woodstock, driven by my American landlord, who showed himself as good-natured and civil as he was impenetrably stupid.

No one who has a single atom of imagination, can travel through these forest roads of Canada without being strongly impressed and excited. The seemingly interminable line of trees before you; the boundless wilderness around; the mysterious depths amid the multitudinous foliage, where foot of man hath never penetrated,--and which partial gleams of the noontide sun, now seen, now lost, lit up with a changeful magical beauty,--the wondrous splendour and novelty of the flowers,--the silence, unbroken but by the low cry of a bird, or hum of insect, or the splash and croak of some huge bull-frog,--the solitude in which we proceeded mile after mile, no human being, no human dwelling within sight,--are all either exciting to the fancy, or oppressive to the spirits, according to the mood one may be in.

* * * * *

DRIVE TO WOODSTOCK.

I observed some birds of a species new to me; there was the lovely blue-bird, with its brilliant violet plumage; and a most gorgeous species of woodpecker, with a black head, white breast, and back and wings of the brightest scarlet; hence it is called by some the field-officer, and more generally the cock of the woods. I should have called it the coxcomb of the woods, for it came flitting across our road, clinging to the trees before us, and remaining pertinaciously in sight, as if conscious of its own splendid array, and pleased to be admired.

There was also the Canadian robin, a bird as large as a thrush, but in plumage and shape resembling the sweet bird at home "that wears the scarlet stomacher." There were great numbers of small birds of a bright yellow, like canaries, and I believe of the same genus. Sometimes, when I looked up from the depth of foliage to the blue firmament above, I saw an eagle sailing through the air on apparently motionless wings. Nor let me forget the splendour of the flowers which carpeted the woods on either side. I might have exclaimed with Eichendorff,

"O Welt! Du schoene welt, Du! Mann sieht Dich vor Bluemen kaum!"

for thus in some places did a rich embroidered pall of flowers literally _hide_ the earth. There those beautiful plants, which we cultivate with such care in our gardens, azalias, rhododendrons, all the gorgeous family of the lobelia, were flourishing in wild luxuriance. Festoons of creeping and parasitical plants hung from branch to branch. The purple and scarlet iris, blue larkspur, and the elegant Canadian columbine with its bright pink flowers; the scarlet lychnis, a species of orchis of the most dazzling geranium-colour, and the white, and yellow, and purple cyprepedium[8], bordered the path, and a thousand others of most resplendent hues, for which I knew no names. I could not pass them with forbearance, and my Yankee driver, alighting, gathered for me a superb bouquet from the swampy margin of the forest. I contrived to fasten my flowers in a wreath along the front of the wagon, that I might enjoy at leisure their novelty and beauty. How lavish, how carelessly profuse, is Nature in her handiwork! In the interior of the cyprepedium, which I tore open, there was variety of configuration and colour, and gem-like richness of ornament, enough to fashion twenty different flowers; and for the little fly, in jewelled cuirass, which I found couched within its recesses--what a palace! that of Aladdin could not have been more splendid!