Canada and the Canadians

S >> Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle >> Canada and the Canadians

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The present age is most prone to this false estimate of learning and to
public scientific display. If science, true science, yields to it,
learning will very soon vanish from the face of the earth again, and
nothing but monkish lore and the dark ages return.

There is a vast field open for research in Canada: it is yet a virgin
soil, both as respects its moral and its physical cultivation.
Therefore, plain facts are the best, and those made as level to the eye
as possible; for the amusing mistakes which a would-be learned man
makes, after a cursory perusal of anything scientific, only subject him
to silent derision.

A very old casual acquaintance of mine, a sort of man holding a rather
elevated rank, but originally from the great unwashed, who had risen by
mere chance, aided by a little borough influence, was talking to me one
day about some property of his in Western Canada, which he fancied had
rich minerals upon it. Accordingly, he had taken a preliminary Treatise
on Mineralogy in hand, and puzzled his brains in order to converse
learnedly. "My land," quoth he, "is Silesia, and has a great bed of
sulphuret of pyrites." The poor gentleman, who had a vast opinion of
himself and always contradicted everybody about everything, meant that
his soil contained a deal of silica, and that iron pyrites was abundant
in it.

The importance of the annual migration from Britain is best evidenced by
the representation of the chief emigrant agent at Quebec, subjoined.

In all the great sea-ports of England, Ireland, and Scotland, there are
emigrant agents appointed by the government, to whom application should
always be made for information, by every emigrant who has not the
advantage of friends in Canada to receive and guide him; and these
gentlemen prevent the trouble, expense, loss of time, and fraud, to
which the poor settlers are subjected by the crimps and agents, with
whom every sea-port abounds.

On their arrival in Canada, if ignorant of their way, they should apply
at Quebec to the government principal agent, who is stationed there for
the lower or eastern part of Canada, and he will give them either advice
or passage, according to the nature of the case.

It is a pity that a rage exists for going as far west as possible at
first, for this rage causes distress, and ends frequently by their being
kidnapped into settling in the United States.

If, however, they are determined to go on to Western Canada, their
course is either to pay their own way, or to obtain assistance from the
government to send them on to Kingston, where another government agent
for Western Canada is stationed; and, as this gentleman has now acted in
that capacity for many years, he possesses a perfect knowledge of the
country and its resources, and of the wants and objects of the
settlers.

There is excellent land, and plenty of it to be obtained from the
British American Land Company in Lower Canada, in that portion called
"The Townships," which adjoin the states of Vermont and New York; and,
excepting that the winters are longer, the climate more severe, it is as
desirable as any other part of the province, and, in point of health,
perhaps more so, as it is sufficiently far from the great river and
lakes to make it less subject to ague; which, however, more or less, all
new countries in the temperate zone, well forested and watered, are
invariably the seat of, and which is increased in power and frequency in
proportion to the neighbourhood of fresh water in large bodies, and the
use of whiskey as a preventive.

From a statement of the number of emigrants to this colony for the last
sixteen years, compiled by A.C. Buchanan, Esq., chief emigrant agent, it
appears that, in the five years subsequently to 1829, the emigration
from the British Isles was 165,793. From other sources, in the three
years, from 1829 to 1832, the emigration exceeded that of the previous
ten years--the numbers being respectively, 125,063 and 121,170. In 1832,
the emigrants arrived reached the high number of 51,746; but the cholera
of that year was of so fatal a character on the St. Lawrence, that the
numbers in 1833 fell 22,062. This epidemic, coupled with the rebellions
of '37 and '38, materially checked the increased emigration commenced in
1836. In 1838, the number was only 3,266, and in 1839, 7,500. But, since
1840, emigration has again recovered, and, during the period of
navigation of 1845, it amounted to 27,354, of whom 2,612 arrived _via_
the United States.

The United States, however, received by far the largest proportion of
the emigration from Britain. At the port of New York alone, from 1st
November, 1844, to 31st October, 1845, there arrived--

From England and Scotland 10,653
From Ireland 38,300
-------
Total at New York 48,953

The number of emigrants landed at the port of Quebec, in 1845, was
25,375.

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NUMBER OF EMIGRANTS SINCE 1829. |
|----------------+----------+----------+----------+----------+---------|
| |'29 to '33|'34 to '38|'39 to '43|'44 to '45| Total. |
| | | | | | |
| |----------|----------|----------|----------|---------|
|England. | 43,386 | 28,624 | 30,318 | 16,531 | 119,354 |
|Ireland. | 102,264 | 54,898 | 74,981 | 24,201 | 256,344 |
|Scotland. | 20,143 | 10,998 | 16,289 | 4,408 | 51,838 |
|British American| | | | | |
| Prov. &c. | 1,904 | 1,831 | 1,777 | 377 | 5,589 |
| |----------+----------+----------+----------+---------|
| | 167,697 | 96,351 | 123,860 | 45,517 | 433,425 |
+----------------+----------+----------+----------+----------+---------+

Upper Canada would seem to have received the largest share of the influx
of population. The increase in the number of its inhabitants, between
1827 and 1843, is stated at 230,000.

The local government has for some few years past encouraged, although
rather scantily, as Mr. Logan can, I dare say, testify, an exploration
of the natural resources of the Canadas, as far as geology and
mineralogy are concerned. Its medical statistics, its botany and
zoology, will follow; and agriculture, that primary and most noble of
all applications of the mind to matter, is making rapid strides, by the
formation of district and local societies, which will do infinitely more
good than any system of government patronage for the advancement of the
welfare of the people could devise.

The public works have also, for the first time, been placed under the
control of the executive and legislative bodies by the formation of a
board, which is itself also subject to the supervision of the
government.

But much remains to be done on this important head. A melancholy error
was committed in making the President, and consequently all the officers
and _employes_, of the Board of Works, partizans of the ministry of the
day; thus paralyzing the efforts of a zealous man, on the one hand, by
the fear of dismissal upon any change of the popular will, and
neutralizing his efforts whilst in office, by rendering his measures
mere jobs.

This has been amended under Lord Metcalfe's administration; and it is to
be hoped that the office of President of the Board of Works will
hereafter be one subjected to severe but not to vexatious scrutiny, and
at the same time carefully guarded against political influence, and only
rendered tenable with honour by the capacity of the person selected to
fill it and of his subordinates. Canada is, as I have written two former
volumes to prove, a magnificent country. I doubt very much if Nature has
created a finer country on the whole earth.

The soil is generally good, as that made by the decay of forests for
thousands of years upon substrata, chiefly formed of alluvion or
diluvion, the deposit from waters, must be. It is, moreover, from Quebec
to the Falls of St. Mary, almost a flat surface, intersected and
interlaced by numberless streams, and studded with small lakes, whilst
its littorale is a river unparalleled in the world, expanding into
enormous fresh water seas, abounding with fish.

If the tropical luxuries are absent, if its winters are long and
excessively severe, yet it yields all the European fruits abundantly,
and even some of the tropical ones, owing to the richness of its soil
and the great heat of the summer. Maize, or Indian corn, flourishes, and
is more wholesome and better than that produced in the warm South. The
crops of potato, that apple of the earth, as the French so justly term
it, are equal, if not superior, to those of any other climate; whilst
all the vegetables of the temperate regions of the old world grow with
greater luxuriance than in their original fields. I have successively
and successfully cultivated the tomato, the melon, and the capsicum, in
the open air, for several seasons, at Kingston and Toronto, which are
not the richest or the best parts of Western Canada, as far as
vegetation is concerned. Tobacco grows well in the western district, and
where is finer wheat harvested than in Western Canada?--whilst hay, and
that beauty of a landscape, the rich green sod, the velvet carpet of the
earth, are abundant and luxuriant.

If the majesty of vegetation is called in question, and intertropical
plants brought forward in contrast, even the woods and trackless
forests of Guiana, where the rankest of luxuriance prevails, will not do
more than compete with the glory of the primeval woods of Canada. I know
of nothing in this world capable of exciting emotions of wonder and
adoration more directly, than to travel alone through its forests.
Pines, lifting their hoary tops beyond man's vision, unless he inclines
his head so far backwards as to be painful to his organization, with
trunks which require fathoms of line to span them; oaks, of the most
gigantic form; the immense and graceful weeping elm; enormous poplars,
whose magnitude must be seen to be conceived; lindens, equally vast;
walnut trees of immense size; the beautiful birch, and the wild cherry,
large enough to make tables and furniture of.

Oh, the gloom and the glory of these forests, and the deep reflection
that, since they were first created by the Divine fiat, civilized man
has never desecrated them with his unsparing devastations; that a
peculiar race, born for these solitudes, once dwelt amidst their
shades, living as Nature's woodland children, until a more subtile being
than the serpent of Eden crept amongst them, and, with his glittering
novelties and dangerous beauty, caused their total annihilation! I see,
in spirit, the red hunter, lofty, fearless, and stern, stalking in his
painted nudity, and displaying a form which Apollo might have envied,
amidst the everlasting and silent woods; I see, in spirit, the bearded
stranger from the rising sun, with his deadly arms and his more deadly
fire-water, conversing with his savage fellow, and displaying the envied
wealth of gorgeous beads and of gaudy clothing.

The scene changes, the proud Indian is at the feet of his ensnarer;
disease has relaxed his iron sinews; drunkenness has debased his mind;
and the myriad crimes and vices of civilized Europe have combined to
sweep the aborigines of the soil from the face of the forest earth. The
forest groans beneath the axe; but, after a few years, the scene again
changes; fertile fields, orchards and gardens, delight the eye; the
city, and the town, and the village spires rise, and where two solitary
wigwams of the red hunter were once alone occasionally observed, twenty
thousand white Canadians now worship the same Great Author of the
existence of all mankind.

And to increase these fields, these orchards, these gardens, these
villages, these towns, and these cities, year after year, thirty
thousand of the children of Britain cross the broad Atlantic: and what
seeks this mass of human beings, braving the perils of the ocean and the
perils of the land? Competence and wealth! The former, by prudence, is
soon attainable; the acquisition of the latter uncertain and fickle.

No free grants of land are now given, but the settler may obtain them
upon easy terms from the government, or the Canada and British American
companies.

The settler with a small capital cannot do better than purchase out and
out. Instalments are a bad mode of purchasing; for, if all should not
turn out right, instalments are sometimes difficult to meet; and the
very best land, in the best locations, as we shall hereafter see, is to
be had from 7s. 6d., if in the deep Bush, as the forest is called; to
10s., if nearer a market; or 15s. and 20s., if very eligibly situated.
Thus for two hundred pounds a settler can buy two hundred acres of good
land, can build an excellent house for two hundred and fifty more, and
stock his farm with another fifty, as a beginning; or, in other words,
he can commence Canadian life for five hundred pounds sterling, with
every prospect before him, if he has a family, of leaving them
prosperous and happy. But he and they must work, work, work. He and all
his sons must avoid whiskey, that bane of the backwoods, as they would
avoid the rattlesnake, which sometimes comes across their path. Whiskey
and wet feet destroy more promising young men in Canada than ague and
fever, that scourge of all well watered woody countries; for the ague
and fever seldom kill but with the assistance of the dram and of
exposure.

Men nurtured in luxury or competence at home, as soon as the unfailing
_ennui_ arising from want of society in the backwoods begins to succeed
the excitement of settling, too frequently drink, and in many cases
drink from their waking hour until they sink at night into sottish
sleep. This is peculiarly the case where there is no village nor town
within a day's journey; and thus many otherwise estimable young men
become habitual drunkards, and sink from the caste of gentlemen
gradually into the dregs of society, whilst their wives and families
suffer proportionably.

In Lower Canada, this vice does not prevail to the same extent as in the
upper portion of the province. The French Canadians are not addicted to
the vice of drinking ardent spirits as a people, although the lumberers
and voyageurs shorten their lives very considerably by the use of
whiskey. The _lumberers_, who are the cutters and conveyers of timber,
pass a short and excited existence.

In the winter, buried in the eternal forest, far, far away from the
haunts of man, they chop and hew; in the summer, they form the timber,
boards, staves, &c., into rafts, which are conveyed down the great lakes
and the rivers St. Lawrence and Ottawa to Quebec--on these rafts they
live and have their summer being. Hard fare in plenty, such as salt pork
and dough cakes; fat and unleavened bread, with whiskey, is their diet.
Tea and sugar form an occasional luxury. Up to their waists in snow in
winter, and up to their waists in summer and autumn in water, with all
the moving accidents by flood and field; the occasional breaking-up of
the raft in a rapid, the difficulty of the winter and spring transport
of the heavy logs of squared timber out of the deep and trackless woods,
combine to form a portion of the hard and reckless life of a lumberer,
whose _morale_ is not much better than his _physicale_.

Picture to yourself, child of luxury, sitting on a cushioned sofa, in a
room where the velvet carpet renders a footfall noiseless, where art is
exhausted to afford comfort, and where even the hurricane cannot disturb
your perusal of this work, a wood reaching without limit, excepting the
oceans either of salt or fresh water which surround Canada, and where to
lose the track is hopeless starvation and death; figure the giant pines
towering to the clouds, gloomy and Titan-like, throwing their vast arms
to the skyey influences, and making a twilight of mid-day, at whose
enormous feet a thicket of bushes, almost as high as your head, prevents
your progress without the pioneer axe; or a deep and black swamp for
miles together renders it necessary to crawl from one fallen monarch of
the wood onwards to the decaying and prostrate bole of another, with an
occasional plunge into the mud and water, which they bridge; eternal
silence reigning, disturbed only by your feeble efforts to advance; and
you may form some idea of a red pine land, rocky and uneven, or a cedar
swamp, black as night, dark, dismal, and dangerous.

Here, after you have hewed or crept your toiling way, you see, some
yards or some hundred yards, as the forest is close or open, before
you, a light blue curling smoke amongst the dank and lugubrious scene;
you hear a dull, distant, heavy, sudden blow, frequent and deadened,
followed at long intervals by a tremendous rending, crashing,
overwhelming rush; then all is silent, till the voice of the guardian of
man is heard growling, snarling, or barking outright, as you advance
towards the blue smoke, which has now, by an eddy of the wind, filled a
large space between the trees.

You stand before the fire, made under three or four sticks set up
tenwise, to which a large cauldron is hung, bubbling and seething, with
a very strong odour of fat pork; a boy, dirty and ill-favoured, with a
sharp glittering axe, looks very suspiciously at you, but calls off his
wolfish dog, who sneaks away.

A moment shows you a long hut, formed of logs of wood, with a roof of
branches, covered by birch-bark, and by its side, or near the fire,
several nondescript sties or pens, apparently for keeping pigs in,
formed of branches close to the ground, either like a boat turned
upside down, or literally as a pigsty is formed, as to shape.

In the large hut, which is occasionally more luxurious and made of slabs
of wood or of rough boards, if a saw-mill is within reasonable distance,
and there is a passable wood road, or creek, or rivulet, navigable by
canoes, you see some barrel or two of pork, and of flour, or biscuit, or
whiskey, some tools, and some old blankets or skins. Here you are in the
lumberer's winter home--I cannot call him woodman, it would disgrace the
ancient and ballad-sung craft; for the lumberer is not a gentle woodman,
and you need not sing sweetly to him to "spare that tree."

The larger dwelling is the hall, the common hall, and the pig-sties the
sleeping-places. I presume that such a circumstance as pulling off
habiliments or ablution seldom occurs; they roll themselves in a blanket
or skin, if they have one, and, as to water, they are so frequently in
it during the summer, that I suppose they wash half the year
unintentionally. Fat pork, the fattest of the fat, is the lumberer's
luxury; and, as he has the universal rifle or fowling-piece, he kills a
partridge, a bear, or a deer, now and then.

I was exploring last year some woods in a newly settled township, the
township of Seymour West, in the Newcastle district of Upper Canada,
with a view to see the nakedness of the land, which had been represented
to me as flowing with milk and honey, as all new settlements of course
are said to do. I wandered into the lonely but beautiful forest, with a
companion who owned the soil, and who had told me that the lumberers
were robbing him and every settler around of their best pine timber.
After some toiling and tracing the sound of the axes, few and far
between, felling in the distance, we came upon the unvarying boy at
cookery, the axe, and the dog.

My conductor at once saw the extent of the mischief going on, and,
finding that the gang, although distant from the camp-fire, was
numerous, advised that we should retrace our steps. We however
interrogated the boy, who would scarcely answer, and pretended to know
nothing. The dog began to be inquisitive too, and one of the dogs we had
with us venturing a little too near a savoury piece of pork, the nature
of the young half-bred ruffian suddenly blazed out, and the axe was
uplifted to kill poor Dash. I happened to have a good stick, and
interfered to prevent dog-murder, upon which the wood-demon ejaculated
that he would as soon let out my guts as the dog's, and therefore my
companion had to show his gun; for showing his teeth would have been of
little avail with the young savage.

The settlers are afraid of the lumberers; and thus all the finest land,
near rivers, creeks, or transport of any kind, is swept of the timber to
such an extent that you must go now far, far back from the Lakes, the
St. Lawrence, or the Ottawa, before you can see the forest in its
primeval grandeur.

This robbery has been carried on in so barefaced and extensive a manner,
that the chief adventurer, usually a merchant or trader, who supplies
the axe and canoemen with pay in his shop goods, cent. per cent. above
their value, becomes enriched.

The lumberer's life is truly an unhappy one, for, when he reaches the
end of the raft's voyage, whatever money he may have made goes to the
fiddle, the female, or the fire-water; and he starts again as poor as at
first, living perhaps by a rare chance to the advanced age, for a
lumberer, of forty years.

And a curious sight is a raft, joined together not with ropes but with
the limbs and thews of the swamp or blue beech, which is the natural
cordage of Canada and is used for scaffolding and packing.

A raft a quarter of a mile long--I hope I do not exaggerate, for it may
be half a mile, never having measured one but by the eye--with its
little huts of boards, its apologies for flags and streamers, its
numerous little masts and sails, its cooking caboose, and its
contrivances for anchoring and catching the wind by slanting boards,
with the men who appear on its surface as if they were walking on the
lake, is curious enough; but to see it in _drams_, or detached portions,
sent down foaming and darting along the timber slides of the Ottawa or
the restless and rapid Trent, is still more so; and fearful it is to
observe its _conducteur_, who looks in the rapid by no means so much at
his ease as the functionary of that name to whom the Paris diligence is
entrusted.

Numberless accidents happen; the drams are torn to pieces by the
violence of the stream; the rafts are broken by storm and tempest; the
men get drunk and fall over; and altogether it appears extraordinary
that a raft put together at the Trent village for its final voyage to
Quebec should ever reach its destination, the transport being at least
four hundred and fifty miles, and many go much farther, through an open
and ever agitated fresh water sea, and amongst the intricate channels of
The Thousand Islands, and down the tremendous rapids of the Longue
Sault, the Gallope, the Cedars, the Cascades, &c.

But a new trade, has lately commenced on Lake Ontario, which will break
up some of the hardships of the rafting. Old steamboats of very large
size, when no longer serviceable in their vocation, are now cut down,
and perhaps lengthened, masted, and rigged as barques or ships, and
treated in every respect like the Atlantic timber-vessels. Into these
three-masters, these Leviathans of Lake Ontario, the timber, boards,
staves, handspikes, &c., from the interior are now shipped, and the
timber carried to the head of the St. Lawrence navigation.

One step more, and they will, as soon as the canals are widened, proceed
from Lake Superior to London without a raft being ever made.

That this will soon occur is very evident; for a large vessel of this
kind, as big as a frigate, and named the Goliath, is at the moment that
I am writing preparing at Toronto, near the head of Lake Ontario, a
thousand miles from the open sea, for a voyage direct to the West Indies
and back again. Success to her! What with the railroad from Halifax to
Lake Huron, from the Atlantic Ocean to the great fresh ocean of the
West--what with the electric telegraph now in operation on the banks of
the Niagara by the Americans--what with the lighting of villages on the
shores of Lake Erie with natural gas, as Fredonia is lit, and as the
city of the Falls of Niagara, if ever it is built, will also be, there
is no telling what will happen: at all events, the poor lumberer must
benefit in the next generation, for the worst portion of his toils will
be done away with for ever.

Settler, never become a lumberer, if you can avoid it.

But, as we have in this favourite hobbyhorse style of ours, which causes
description to start up as recollections occur, accompanied the lumberer
on his voyage to that lumberer's Paradise, Quebec, whither he has
conducted his charge to The Coves, for the culler to cull, the marker to
mark, the skipper to ship, and the lumber-merchant to get the best
market he can for it, so we shall return for a short time to Lower
Canada, to talk a little about settlement there.

As I hinted before, Lower Canada is too much decried as a country to
re-commence the world in; but the Anglo-Saxon and Milesian populace are
nevertheless beginning to discover its value, and are very rapidly
increasing both in numbers and importance. The French Canadian yeoman,
or small farmer, has an alacrity at standing still; it is only _le
notaire_ and _le medecin_ that advance; so that, if emigration goes on
at the rate it has done since the rebellion, the old country folks will,
before fifty more years pass over, outnumber and outvote, by ten times,
Jean Baptiste, which is a pity, for a better soul than that merry
mixture of bonhomie and phlegm, the French Canadian is, the wide world's
surface does not produce. Visionary notions of _la gloire de la nation
Canadienne_, instilled into him by restless men, who panted for
distinction and cared not for distraction, misled the _bonnet rouge_
awhile: but he has superadded the thinking cap since; and, although he
may not readily forget the sad lesson he received, yet he has no more
idea of being annexed to the United States than I have of being Grand
Lama. In fact, I really believe that the merciful policy which has been
shown, and the wise measure of making Montreal the seat of government,
and thus practically demonstrating the advantage of the institutions of
England by daily lessons in the heart of their dear country, has done
more to recall the Canadians to a sense of the real value of the
connexion with Great Britain than all the protocols of diplomatists, or
all the powder that ever saltpetre generated, could have achieved.

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