 CHAPTER XII. The Arabian, by which I left Toronto, was inferior to any American steamer I had travelled in. It was crowded with both saloon and steerage passengers bound for Coborg, Port Hope, and Montreal. It was very bustling and dirty, and the carpet was plentifully sprinkled with tobacco juice. The captain was very much flustered with his unusually large, living cargo, but he was a good-hearted man, and very careful, having, to use his own phrase, climbed in at the host holes, and worked his way aft instead of creeping in at the cabin window with his gloves on. The stewards were dirty, and the steward is too smart to attend to the comforts of the passengers. As passengers, crates, and boxes poured in at both the four and aft entrances, I went out on the little slip of deck to look at the prevalent confusion, having previously ascertained that all my effects were secure. The scene was a very amusing one, for acting out the maxim that time is money, comparatively few of the passengers came down to the wharf more than five minutes before the hour of sailing. People among whom were a number of unprotected females and juveniles who would not move on were entangled among trucks and carts discharging cargo, hacks, horses, crates, and barrels. These passengers, who would find it difficult to elbow their way unencumbered, find it next to impossible when their hands are burdened with uncut books, baskets of provender, and diminutive carpet-bats. Horses-back carts against helpless females, barrels roll upon people's toes, newspaper hawkers puff their wares, bon-bon vendors push their plaster of Paris abominations almost at people's eyes, yet, strange to say, it is very seldom that any accident occurs. Early groups invariably are separated, and distracted mamas are running after children whom everybody wishes out of the way, giving utterance to hopes that they are not on shore. Then the obedient papa is set on shore to look after that dear little Harry, who is probably all the time in the lady's saloon on some child fancier's lap eating bon-bons. The board is drawn in, the moorings are cast off, the wheels revolve, the bell rings, the engine squeals, and a way speeds the steamer down the calm waters of Lake Ontario. Little children and inquisitive young ladies are knocked down or blackened in coiling the hauser, by hands who, being nothing but hands, evidently cannot say, I beg your pardon, miss. There were children who always go where they ought not to be, running against people, and taking hold of their clothes with sticky, smeared hands, asking commercial gentlemen to spin their tops, and corpulent ladies to play at hide-and-seek. I saw one stern-visage gentleman tormented in this way till he looked ready to give the child its final quietess. I note that American juveniles are, generally speaking, completely destitute of that agreeable shyness which prevents English and Scotch children from annoying strangers. There were angry people who had lost their portmanteaus, and were ransacking the state-rooms in quest of them, and indolent people who lay on the sofas reading novels and chewing tobacco. Some gentleman, taking no heed of a printed notice, goes into the lady's cabin to see if his wife is safe on board, and meets with a rebuff from the stewardess, who tells him that gentlemen are not admitted, and knowing that the sense, or as he would say the nonsense of the community is against him, he beats a reluctant retreat. Nobody seems to have lost somebody or something, but in an hour or two the ladies are deep in novels, the gentleman in the morning papers, the children have quarreled themselves to sleep, and the captain has gone to smoke by the funnel. I sat on the slip of a deck with a lady from Lake Superior, niece of the accomplished poetess, Mrs. Hemons, and she tried to arouse me into admiration of the shore of Lake Ontario, but I confessed that I was too much occupied with the race which we were running with the American steamer Maple Leaf, to look at the flat, gloomy, forest-fringed coast. There is an inherent love of the excitement of a race in all human beings, even old ladies are not exempt from it if we may believe a story which I heard on the Mississippi. An old lady was going down the river for the first time and expressed to the captain her earnest hope that there would be no racing. Presently another boat neared them, and half the passengers urged the captain to pile on. The old lady shrieked and protested, but to no purpose. The skipper piled on, and as the race was a very long and doubtful one, she soon became excited. The rival boat shot ahead. The old lady gave a side of bacon, her sole possession, to feed the boiler-fires. The boat was left behind. She clapped her hands. It ran ahead again, and frantic. She seated herself upon the safety valve. It was again doubtful, but low. The antagonist's boat was snagged, and the lady gave a yell of perfect delight when she saw it disconfited, and a hundred human beings struggling in the water. Our race, however, was destitute of excitement, for the maple leaf was a much better sailor than ourselves. Dinner constituted an important event in the day, and was dispatched very voraciously, though some things were raw, others overdone, and all greasy. But the three hundred people who sat down to dinner were, as some one observed, three hundred reasons against eating anything. I had to endure a severe attack of og, and about nine o'clock the stewardess gave up her room to me, and, as she faithfully promised to call me half an hour before we changed the boats, I slept very soundly. At five she came in, Get up, miss, we're at Guanananoke. You've only five minutes to dress. I did dress in five minutes, and leaving my watch with some very valuable lockets under my pillow hastened across a narrow plank, half blinded by snow, into the clean, light, handsome steamer, new era. I did not allow myself to fall asleep in the very comfortable stateroom, which was provided for me by the friend with whom I was traveling, but hurried upstairs with the first gray of the chilly wintry dawn of the morning of the eighteenth of October. The saloon windows were dimmed with snow, so I went out on deck and braved the driving wind and snow on that inhospitable morning, for we were in the lake of the thousand islands. Travelers have written and spoken so much of the beauty of this celebrated piece of water that I expected to be disappointed, but o' contraire I am almost inclined to ride a rhapsody myself. For three hours we were sailing among these beautiful, irregularly formed islands. There are one thousand six hundred ninety-two of them, and they vary in size from mere rocks to several acres in extent. Some of them are perfect paradises of beauty. They form a complete labyrinth through which the pilot finds his way, guided by numerous beacons. Sometimes it appeared as if there were no egress and as if we were running straight upon a rock, and the water is everywhere so deep that from the deck of the steamer people can pull the leaves from the trees. A hundred varieties of trees and shrubs grow out of the gray, like-and-covered rocks. It seems barbarous that the paddles of a steamer should disturb their delicate shadows. If I found this lake so beautiful on a day in the middle of October when the bright autumn tints had changed into a russet brown and when a chill northeast wind was blowing about the withered leaves and snow against the ship, and when more than all I was only just recovering from Aug, what would it be on a bright summer day when the blue of heaven would be reflected in the clear waters of the St. Lawrence? By nine a furious snowstorm rendered all objects indistinct, and the fog had thickened to such an extent that we could not see five feet ahead, so we came to anchor for an hour. A very excellent breakfast was dispatched during this time, and at ten we steamed off again, steering by compass on a river barely a mile wide. The new era was a boat of a remarkably high draft of water. The saloon or deck-house came to within fifteen feet of the bow, and on the hurricane deck above there was a tower containing a double wheel, with which the ship is steered by chains one hundred feet long. There is a lookout place in front of this tower, generally occupied by the pilot, a handsome, ruffian-looking French voyageur with earrings in his ears. Captain Chrysler, whose caution, urbanity, and kindness render him deservedly popular, seldom leaves this post of observation, and personally pays a very great attention to his ship, for the river St. Lawrence is as bad a reputation for destroying vessels which navigate it as the Mississippi. The snow is now several inches deep on deck, and melting near the deck-house trickled under the doors and into the saloon. The moisture inside also condensed upon the ceiling, and produced a constant shower-bath for the whole day. Sofas and carpets were alike wet. Everybody sat in galoshes, the ladies in cloaks, the gentlemen in oil-skins, the smell of the ladder, and of so many wet woolen clothes in an apartment heated by stove-heat being almost unbearable. At twelve the fog and snow cleared away, and revealed to view the mighty St. Lawrence, a rapid stream whirling along in small eddies between slightly elevated banks dotted with white homesteads. We passed a gigantic raft with five log shanties upon it, near Prescott. These rafts go slowly and safely down the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa till they come to La Chine, where frequently catastrophes happen if one may judge from the timber which strews the rocks. A gentleman read from a newspaper these terrible statistics, horrible, if true, forty-four murders and seven hundred murderous assaults had been committed at New York within the last six months. Sensation. We stopped at Prescott, one of the oldest towns in Canada, and shortly afterwards passed the blackened ruins of a windmill, and some houses held by a band of American sympathizers during the rebellion of 1838, but from which they were dislodged by the canon of the royal troops. Five hundred American sympathizers, with several pieces of cannon under cover of darkness, on a lovely night in May landed at this place. Soon after they were attacked by a party of English regulars and militiamen, who drove them into a windmill and two strong stone houses which they loophold and defended themselves with a pertinacity which one would have called heroism had it been in a better cause. They finally surrendered and were carried prisoners to Kingston where six of them were hanged. Their leader, a military adventurer, a pole of the name of Von Schultz, was the first to be executed. He fought with a skill and bravery worthy of the nation from once he sprang, and died without complaint except of those who had enticed him to fight for a godless cause under the name of liberty. Brighter days have since dawned upon Canada, and at this time the most discontented can scarcely find the shadow of a grievance to lay hold of. As an instance of the way in which the utilitarian essentials of a high state of civilization are diffused throughout Canada, I may mention that when we arrived at Cornwall I was able to telegraph to Kingston for my lost watch and receive a satisfactory answer in half an hour. After sailing down this mighty river at a rapid rate for some hours we ran the galuse rapids. Running the rapids is a favourite and I must add a charming diversion of adventurous travellers. There is just that slight sense of danger which lends a zest to novelty and it is furnished by the facts that some timid persons land before coming to the rapids, and that many vessels have come to an untimely end in descending them. There is a favourite story of General Amherst, who during the war was sent down by the river to attack Montreal, with three hundred and fifty men, and the first intimation which the inhabitants received of the intended surprise was through the bodies of the ill-fated detachment, clothed in the well-known scarlet, floating by their city, the victims of the ignorance or treachery of the pilot. One of the great pleasures which I promised myself in my visit to Canada was from running these rapids, and I was not disappointed. At the galuse the river expands into a wide shallow stream, containing beautiful islands, among which the water rushes furiously, being broken into large waves, boiling, foaming, and whirling around. The steamer neared the rapids. Half her steam was shut off, six men appeared at the wheel. We glided noiselessly along in smooth, green, deep water. The furious waves were before us. The steamer gave one perceptible downward plunge, the spray dashed over the boughs, and at a speed of twenty-five miles an hour we hurried down the turbulent hill of waters, running so near the islands, often that escaped seemed hopeless, then guided safely away by the skill of the pilot. The next rapid was the long salt, above a mile in length. The St. Lawrence is here divided into two channels. The one we took is called the Lost Passage, the Indian pilot who knew it died, and it has been recovered only within the last five years. It is a very fine rapid, the islands being extremely picturesque. We went down it at a dizzy speed, with all our steam on. I suppose that soon after this we entered the lower provinces, for the aspect of things totally changed. The villages bore French names, there were high wooden crosses by the waterside, the houses were many gabled and many windowed, with tiers of balconies, and the setting sun flashed upon Romish churches with spires of glittering tin. Everything was marked by stagnation and retrogression, the people are habitants, and the clergy craze. We ran the cedars, a magnificent rapid, superior in beauty to the grand rapids at Niagara, and afterwards those of the Coteau du Lac and the Split Rock, but were obliged to anchor at Lachine, as its celebrated cataract can only be shot by daylight. It was cold and dark, and nearly all the passengers left Lachine by the cars for Montreal to avoid what some people consider the perilous descent of this rapid. As both means of reaching Montreal were probably equally safe, I decided on remaining on board, having secured a stateroom. My companions in the saloon were the captain's wife and a lady who seemed decidedly flighty, and totally occupied in waiting upon a poodle lap dog. After the captain left, the stokers and pokers and stewards and cooks extemporized a ball, with the assistance of a blind scotch fiddler, and invited numerous lassies, who appeared as if by magic from a wharf to which we were moored. I cannot say how they tripped it on the light fantastic toe, for brogues and highlows stumped heavily on the floor, but what was wanting in elegance was amply compensated for by merriment and vivacity. The conversation was rather of a polyglot character, being carried on in French, Gaelic, and English. Throughout the night I was occupied in incessant attempts to keep up vital warmth, and when the steward called me at five o'clock, I found that I had been sleeping with the window open, and that the water in the jug was frozen. Wintery-looking stars were twinkling through a frosty fog. The wet houses were frozen stiff on deck. Six came, the hour of starting, but still there were no signs of moving. Railroads have not yet taught punctuality to the Canadians, but better things are in store for them. Cold to the very bone I walked up and down the saloon to warm myself. The floor was wet, covered in saturated rugs, there were no fires in the stoves, and my only resource was to lean against the engine enclosure and warm my frozen hands on the hot wood. I was joined by a very old gentleman, who amid many complaints informed me that he had an attack of apoplexy during the night, and someone, finding him insensible, had opened the jugular vein. His lank white hair flowed over his shoulders, and his netcloth and shirt front were smeared with blood. He said he had cut his wife's throat, and that her ghost was after him. There, there, he said, pointing to a corner, I looked at his eyes and saw at once that I was in the company of a madman. He then said that he was the king of the island of Montreal, and that he had murdered his wife because she was going to betray him to the Queen of England. He was now, he declared, going down to make a public entrance into Montreal. After this avowal I treated him with the respect due to his fancied rank, till I could call the stewards without exciting his suspicions. They said that he was a confirmed lunatic, and that he had several times attempted to lay violent hands upon himself. They thought that he must have escaped from his keeper at Brockville, and with true madman's cunning had secreted himself in the steamer. They kept him under strict surveillance till we arrived at Montreal, and frustrated in an attempt which he made to throw himself into the rapid as we were descending it. At seven we unmoored from the pier at La Chine, and steamed over the calm waters of the Lac Saint-Louis, under the care of a Canadian voyageur who acted as a subordinate to an Indian pilot, who is said to be the only person acquainted with the passage and whom the boats are obliged under penalty to take. The lake narrows at La Chine, and becomes again the St. Lawrence, which presents a most extraordinary appearance, being a hill of shallow rushing water about a mile wide, chafing a few islands which look ready to be carried away by it. The large river Ottawa joins the St. Lawrence a short distance from this, and mingles its turbid waters with that mighty flood. The river becomes more and more rapid till we entered what might be termed a sea of large, cross, leaping waves, and raging waters enough to engulf a small boat. The idea of descending it in a steamer was an extraordinary one. It is said that from the shore a vessel looks as if it were hurrying to certain destruction. Still we hurry on, with eight men at the wheel, rocks appear like snags in the middle of the stream. We dash straight down upon rocky islets, strewn with the wrecks of rafts, but a turn of the wheel, and we rush by them in safety at a speed, to his said, of thirty miles an hour, till a ragged ledge of rocks stretches across the whorling stream. Still on we go, louder roars the flood, steeper appears the descent, earth, sky, and water seem mingled together. I, involuntarily, took hold of the rail. The madmen attempted to jump over, the flighty ladies screamed and embraced more closely her poodle-dog. We reached the ledge, one narrow space free from rocks appeared. Down, with a plunge, went the bow into a turmoil of foam, and we had shot the cataract of Lausheen. The exploit is one of the most agreeable which the traveller can perform, and the thick morning mist added to the apparent danger. We steamed, for four or five miles farther down the river, and suddenly the great curtain of mist was rolled up as by an invisible hand, and the scene which it revealed was Montreal. I never saw a city which looked so magnificent from the water. It covers a very large extent of ground, which gently slopes upwards from the lake-like river, and is backed by the mountain, a precipitous hill, seven hundred feet in height. It is decidedly foreign in appearance, even from a distance. When the fog cleared away it revealed this mountain, with the forest which covers it, all scarlet and purple, the blue waters of the river hurried joyously along, the green and bell-isle mountains were the rosy tints of dawn, the distances were bathed in a purple glow, and the tin roofs, lofty spires, and cupolas of Montreal flashed back the beams of the rising sun. A lofty gothic edifice, something from a distance like West Mr. Abbey, and a handsome public building, with a superb war for a mile long, of hewn stone, present a very imposing appearance from the water. We landed from the first lock of a ship canal, and I immediately drove to the residence of the Bishop of Montreal, a house near the mountain in a very elevated situation, and commanding a magnificent view. From the bishop and his family I received the greatest kindness, and have very agreeable recollections of Montreal. It was the most curious and startling change from the wooden erections, wide streets, and the impress of novelty which pervaded everything I had seen in the New World, to the old stone edifices, lofty houses, narrow streets, and tin roofs of the city of Montreal. There are iron window shutters, con vents with graded windows and long dead walls. There are narrow thoroughfares, crowded with strangely dressed habitants, and long processions of priests. Then the French origin of the town contrasts everywhere with the English occupation of it. There are streets, the Rue Saint-Jean-Vierre, the Rue Saint-Antoine, and the Rue Saint-François-Zévière. There are ancient customs and feudal privileges, Jesuit seminaries and convents of the Sous-Augrie and the Cépocians, priests in long black dresses, native carters and coats with hoods, woollen nightcaps and colored sashes, and barristers pleading in the French language. Then there are Manchester goods, in stores kept by bustling Yankees, soldiers lounge about in the scarlet and rifle uniforms of England, Presbyterian tunes sound from plain bald churches, the institutions are drawn alight from Paris and Westminster, and the public vehicles partake of the fashions of Lisbon and Longacre. You hear plassos d'hommes on one side of the street and galang on the other, and the United States have contributed their hotel system and their slang. Montreal is an extraordinary place. It is alive with business and enterprising traders, with soldiers, carters and ecoupages. Through the kindness of the bishop I saw everything of any interest in the town. The first thing which attracted my attention was the magnificent view from the windows of the Seahouse over the wide St. Lawrence and the green mountains of Vermont. The next, an immense pair of elaborately worked bronze gates at a villa opposite, large enough for a royal residence. The sidewalks in the outskirts of the town were still of the villainous wood, but in the streets they were very substantial, and, like the massive stone houses, looked as if they had lasted for two hundred years and might last for a thousand more. We visited, among other things, some schools, one, the normal school, an extremely interesting place where it is intended to train teachers on Church of England principles. I was very much surprised and pleased with the amount of solid information and high attainments of the children, as evidenced by their composition and answers to the Bishop of Montreal's very difficult questions. They looked sallow and emaciated, and contrary to what I have observed in England, the girls seemed the most intelligent. The bishop has also established a library, where, for the small sum of four shillings a year, people can regale themselves upon a variety of works, from the volumes of Allison, not more ponderous in appearance than matter, to the newspaper literature of the day. The furrier shops are by no means to be overlooked. There were slay-robes of buffalo, bear, fox, wolf, and raccoon, burying in price from six to thirty guineas, and coats, leggings, gloves, and caps, rendered necessary by the severity of a winter in which the thermometer often stands at thirty degrees below zero. People vie with each other in the costliness of their furs and slay-equipments, a complete set sometimes costing as much as a hundred guineas. I went into the Romish Cathedral, which is the largest gothic building in the New World. It was intended to be very imposing, it has succeeded in being very extravagant, and if the architects intended that their work should live in the admiration of seceding generations, like Yorkminster, Colonia, or Ruin, they have signally failed. Internally, the effect of its vast size is totally destroyed by pews and galleries which accommodate ten thousand people. There are some very large and very hideous paintings in it, in a very inferior style of sign-painting. The ceiling is painted bright blue, and the high altar was one mass of gaudy, tinseled decorations. In one corner there was a picture of babies being devoured by pigs, and trampled upon by horses, and underneath it was a box for offerings with, this is the fate of the children of China, upon it. By it was a wooden box hung with faded pink calico containing small wooden representations in the Noah's Ark style of dogs, horses, and pigs, and a tall man holding up a little dog by its hind leg. This peep-show, for I can call it nothing else, was at the same time so inexplicable and so ludicrous that to avoid shocking the feelings of a devout-looking woman who was praying near it by an eclaturir we hurried from the church. I met with many sincere and devout Romanists among the upper classes in Canada. I know that there are thousands among the simple habitans, and, though in a thoughtless moment the fulleries and purellities of their churches may excite a smile, it is a matter for the deepest regret that so many of our fellow subjects should be the dupes of a despotic priesthood and of a religion which cannot save. Close to the cathedral is the convent of the grey sisters, who with the most untiring zeal and kindness fulfill the vocations of the sisters of charity. There are several other convents, some of them very strict, and their high walls and grated windows give Montreal a very continental appearance. On a lady remarking to a sister in one of these that the view from the windows was very beautiful, she replied with a suppressed sigh that she had never seen it. There are some very fine public buildings and banks, but as I am not writing a guide-book I will not dilate upon their merits. We walked around the Champ de Marre, formerly the great resort of the Montreal young ladies, and along the Rue Notre-Dame to the marketplace which is said to be the second finest in the world, and with its handsome façade and bright tin dome forms one of the most prominent objects from the water. As these disgusting disfigurements of our English towns, butcher's shops are not to be seen in the Canadian towns, nor I believe I may say in those in the States, there is an enormous display of meat in the Montreal market, of an appearance by no means tempting. The scene outside was extremely picturesque. There were hundreds of carts with shaggy, patient little horses and rows with very miscellaneous tents, cabbages and butter, jostling pork and hides. You may see here hundreds of habitants who look as if they ought to have lived a century ago, shaggy men in fur caps and loose blue freeze-coats with hoods, and with bright sashes of colored wool round their waists, women also with hard features and bronzed complexions, in large straw hats, high white caps and noisy sabbots. On all sides a jargon of Irish, English and French is to be heard, the latter generally the broadest patois. We went into the council chamber, the richly cushioned seats of which looked more fitted for sleep than deliberation, and I caught a glimpse of the ex-mayor, whose timidity during a time of popular ferment occasioned a great loss of human life. That popular Italian orator, Father Gavasi, was engaged in denouncing the suppositions and impositions of Rome, and on a mom evincing symptoms of turbulence this mayor gave the order to fire to the troops who were drawn up in the streets. Scarcely had the words past his lips when by one volley seventeen peaceful citizens, if I recollect rightly, coming out of the Unitarian chapel, were laid low. Montreal is a turbulent place. It is not very many years since a mob assembled and burned down the Parliament House, for which exercise of the popular will the city is disqualified from being the seat of government. I saw something of Montreal society, which seemed to me to be quite on a par with that in our English provincial towns. I left this ancient city at seven o'clock on a very dark, foggy evening for Quebec. The boats between the two cities running by night, in order that the merchants, by a happy combination of traveling with sleep, may not lose that time which is to them money. This mode of proceeding is very annoying to tourists, who thereby lose the far-famed beauties of the St. Lawrence. It is very obnoxious likewise to timid travelers, of whom there are a large number, both male and female, for collisions and striking on rocks or shoals are accidents of such frequent occurrence that, out of eight steamers which began the season, two only concluded it, two being disabled during my visit to Quebec. Scarcely had we left the wharf at Montreal when we came into collision with a brig, and hooked her anchor into our woodwork, which event caused a chorus of screams from some ladies whose voices were rather stronger than their nerves, and its remedy a great deal of bad language in French, German, and English from the crews of both vessels. After this we ran down to Quebec at the rate of seventeen miles an hour, and the contra-tongue did not prevent even those who had screamed the loudest from partaking of a most substantial supper which was served at eight o'clock in the lowest story of the ship. The John Munn was a very fine boat, not at all the worst for having sunk in the river in the summer. I considered Quebec quite the goal of my journey, for books, tongues, and poetry alike celebrate its beauty. Indeed, there seems to be only one opinion about it. From the lavish praise bestowed upon it by the eloquent and gifted author of Haka-Laga, down to the homely accompaniments pronounced by bluff sea-captains, there seems to be a unanimity of admiration which is rarely met with. Even commercial travelers, absorbed in intricate calculations of dollars and cents, have been known to look up from their books to give it an enthusiastic expression of approval. I expected to be more pleased with it than with anything I had seen or was to see, and was insensiate enough to rise at five o'clock and proceed into the saloon, one of course it was too dark for another hour to see anything. Daylight came, and from my corner by the fire I asked the stewardess when we should be in Quebec. She replied that we were close to it. I went to the window, expecting that a vision of beauty would burst upon my eyes. All that I saw might be summed up in a very few words. A few sticks placed vertically, which might be mass, and some tin spires looming through a very yellow opaque medium. This was my first view of Quebec. Happily on my last, the elements did full justice to its beauty. Other objects developed themselves as we steamed down to the wharf. There were huge rafts, sometimes three or four acres in extent, which, having survived the perils which had beset them on their journey from the forests of Ottawa, were now moored along the base of the lofty cliff switch under the name of the Heights of Abraham, have a world-wide celebrity. There were huge, square-sided, bluff-bowed, low-masted ships lying at anchor in interminable lines, and little, dirty, vicious-looking steam-tugs twirling in and out among them, and there were grim-looking muzzles of guns protruding through embrasures and parapetetic fur caps and bayonets behind parapets of very solid masonry. Above all, shadowing all and sleeping all, was the thickest fog ever seen beyond the sound of bow-bells. It lay, thick and heavy on point diamond, dimming the luster of the bayonets of the sentinels as they paced the lofty bastions, and looked down into the abyss of fog below. It lay yet heavier on the rapid St. Lawrence, and dripped from the spars and rigging of ships. It hung over and enveloped the town, where combined with smoke it formed a yellow canopy, and damp and chill it penetrated the flag of England, weighing it down in heavy folds as though ominous of impending calamity. Slowly winding our torturous way among multitudinous ships, all vamped in drizzling mist, we were warped to the wharf, which was covered with a mixture of mud and cold dust, permeated by the universal fog. Here vehicles of a most extraordinary nature awaited us, and to my great surprise they were all open. They were called calashas, and looked something like very high gigs with hoods and sea-springs. Where the dashboard was not, there was a little seat or perch for the driver, who, with a foot on each shaft, looked in a very precarious position. These conveyances have the most absurd appearance. There are, however, a few closed vehicles, both at Montreal and Quebec, which I believe are not to be found in the civilized world elsewhere, except in a few back streets of Lisbon. These consist of a square box on two wheels. This box has a top, back, and front, but where the sides ought to be there are curtains of deer-hide, which are a very imperfect protection from wind and rain. The driver sits on the roof, and the conveyance has a constant tendency backwards, which is only partly contracted by a band under the horse's body, but only partially, and the inexperienced denizen of the box fancies himself in a state of constant jeopardy. In an open collage I drove to Russell's Hotel, along streets steeper, narrower, and dirtier than any I had ever seen. Arrived within two hundred yards of the hotel, we were set down in the mud. On alighting a gentleman who had been my fellow traveller politely offered to guide me, and soon after addressed me by my name. Who can you possibly be? I asked, so completely had a beard metamorphosized in acquaintance of five years standing. Once within the hotel I had the greatest difficulty in finding my way about. It is composed of three of the oldest houses in Quebec, and has no end of long passages, dark winding staircases, and queer little rooms. It is haunted to a fearful extent by rats, and direful stories, horrible, if true, were related in the parlor of personal mutilation sustained by visitors. My room was by no means in the oldest part of the house, yet I used to hear nightly stories made in a very systematic manner by these quadruped intruders. The waiters at Russell's are complained of for their incivility, but we thought them most profuse both in their civility and attentions. Nevertheless, with all its disagreeables, Russell's is the best hotel in Quebec, and as a number of the members of the Legislative Assembly live there while Parliament meets in that city, it is very lively and amusing. When my English friends Mr. and Mistress Alderson arrived, we saw a good deal of the town, but it has been so often described that I may as well pass on to other subjects. The glowing descriptions given of it by the author of Hakelaga must be familiar to many of my readers. They leave nothing to be desired except the genial glow of enthusiasm and kindness of heart, which threw a color de rose over everything he saw. There are some notions which must be unlearned in Canada or temporarily laid aside. At the beginning of winter, which is the gay season in this Paris of the New World, every unmarried gentleman who chooses to do so selects a young lady to be his companion in the numerous amusements of the time. It does not seem that anything more is needed than the consent of the maiden, who, when she acquiesces in the arrangement, is called a muffin, for the mamas were muffins themselves in their day and cannot refuse their daughters the same privilege. The gentleman is privileged to take the young lady about in his sleigh, to ride with her, to walk with her, to dance with her a whole evening without any remark, to escort her to parties and be her attendant on all occasions. When the spring arrives the arrangement is at an end, and I did not hear that an engagement is frequently the result, or that the same couple enter into this agreement for two successive winters. Probably the reason may be that they see too much of each other. This practice is almost universal at Montreal and Quebec. On the fine frosty moonlight nights, when the sleigh bells ring merrily and the crisp snow crackles under the horse's feet, the gentleman call to take their muffins to meetings of the slaying clubs, or to snowshoe picnics, or to champagne suppers on the ice, from which they do not return till two in the morning. Yet with all this apparent freedom of manner the Canadian ladies are perfectly modest, feminine, and ladylike. Their simplicity of manners is great, and probably there is no country in the world where there is a larger amount of domestic felicity. The beauty of the young ladies of Canada is celebrated, and though on going to a large party one may not see more than two or three who are strikingly, or regularly beautiful, the tuch ensemble is most attractive. The eyes are invariably large and lustrous, dark and pensive, or blue and sparkling with vivacity. Their manners and movements are unaffected and elegant. They dress in exquisite taste, and with a grace peculiarly their own. Their manners have a fascination and witchery which is perfectly irresistible. They generally receive their education at the convents and go into society at a very early age, very frequently before they have seen sixteen summers, and after this time the whirl of amusement precludes them from giving much time to literary employments. They are by no means deeply red, and few of them play anything more than moderate dance music. They dance beautifully, and so great is their passion for this amusement, probably derived from their French ancestors that married ladies frequently attend the same dancing classes with their children in order to keep themselves in a constant practice. At the time of my visit to Quebec there were large parties every night, most of which were honoured with the presence of Lord Elgin and his suite. One of his aide-de-camp was Lord Brewery, Lord Abelmar's son, who on a tour through North America became enamoured of Quebec. Lord Elgin's secretary was Mr. Oliphant, the talented author of the Russian shores of the Black Sea, who had also yielded to the fascinations of this northern capital, and no wonder, for there is not a friendlier place in the whole world. I went armed with but two letters of introduction, and received hospitality and kindness for which I can never be sufficiently grateful. The cholera, which in America assumes nearly the fatality and rapidity of the plague, had during the summer ravaged Quebec. It had entered and desolated happy homes, and not confining itself to the abodes of the poor and miserable, had attacked the rich, the gifted, and the beautiful. For long the destroying angel hovered over the devoted city, neither age nor infancy was spared, and numbers were daily hurried from the vigor of living manhood into silence and oblivion of the grave. Vigorous people, walking along the streets, were suddenly seized with shiverings and cramp, and sank down on the pavement to rise no more, sometimes actually expiring on the cold hard stones. Pleasure was forgotten, business was partially suspended, all who could fled. The gloom upon the souls of the inhabitants was heavier than the brown cloud which was supposed to brood over the city, and the steamers which conveyed those who fled from the terrible pestilence arrived at Toronto, freighted with the living and the dead. Among the terror-stricken, the dying and the dead, the ministers of religion pursued their holy calling, undaunted by the terrible sites which met them everywhere. The clergy of the different denominations vied with each other in their kindness and devotedness. The priests of Rome then gained a double influence. Armed with what appeared in the eyes of the people, supernatural powers, they knew no rest either by night or day. They held a cross before many a darkening eye, and spoke to the bereaved, in the plenitude of their anguish, of a world where sorrow and separation are alike unknown. The heavy clang of tolling bells was hourly heard, as the pestilence-stricken were carried to their last homes. Medical skill availed nothing. The pestilence with walketh in darkness was only removed by him in whose hand are the issues of life and death. Quebec had been free from disease for about six weeks before I visited it. The victims of the pestilence were cold in their untimely graves. The sun of prosperity smiled upon the fortress city, and its lighthearted inhabitants had just begun their nightly round of pleasure and gaiety. The viceroyalty of Lord Elgin was drawing rapidly to a close, and two parties, given every week at Government House, afforded an example which the good people of Quebec were not slow to follow. There were more musical parties, conversaciones, and picnics to Chaudière and Lorette, and people who were dancing till four or five in the morning were vigorous enough after ten for a gallop to Montmorency. The absolute restlessness of the city astonished me very much. The mornings seemed to begin with fashionable people, with a dulcetory breakfast at nine o'clock, after which some received collars, others paid visits, or walked into the town to make trifling purchases at the stores, while not a few of the young ladies promenaded St. Louis Street or the ramparts, where they were generally joined by the officers. Several officers said to me that no quarters in the world were so delightful as those at Quebec. A scarlet coat finds great favour with the fair sex at Quebec. Civilians, however great their mental qualifications, are decidedly in the background, and I was amused to see young ensigns with budding moustaches who had just joined their regiments preferred before men of high literary attainments. With balls, and moose-hunting, and slay-driving, and tobogganing, and last but not least, muffins, the time passes rapidly by to them. A gentleman who had just arrived from England declared that Quebec was a horrid place, not fit to live in. A few days after he met the same individual to whom he had made this uncomplementary observation, and invited to him that he thought Quebec the most delightful place in the whole world, for, do you know, he said, I have got a muffin. With the afternoon numerous writing parties are formed, for you cannot go three miles out of Quebec without coming to something beautiful, and calls of a more formal nature are paid. Military band performs on Durham Terrace or the garden, which then assume the appearance of most fashionable promenades. The evening is spent in the ballroom, or at small social dancing parties, or during the winter, before ten at night, in the galleries of the House of Assembly, and the morning is well advanced before the world of Quebec is hushed in sleep. Society is contained in very small limits at Quebec. Its elite are grouped round the ramparts and in the suburb of St. Louis. The city, until recently, has occupied a very isolated position, and has depended upon itself for society. It is therefore sociable, friendly, and hospitable, and though there is gossip, for where is it not to be found, I never knew any in which there was so little of ill nature. The little world in the upper part of the city is probably the most brilliant to be found anywhere in so small a compass. But there is a world below, another nation, seldom mentioned in the aristocratic quarter of St. Louis, where vise, crime, poverty, and misery jostle each other, as pleasure and politics do in the upper town. This is the suburb of St. Rock, in whose tall dark houses and fetid alleys those are to be found whose birthright is toil, whose spend life in supplying the necessities of today, while indulging in gloomy apprehensions for to-morrow, who have not one comfort in the past to cling to, or one hope for the future to cheer. St. Rock is as crowded as the upper town, but with a very different population, the poor, degraded, and the vicious. Here fever destroys its tens and cholera its hundreds. Here people stab each other and think little of it. Here are narrow alleys, with high black-looking stone houses, with broken windows pasted over with paper in the lower stories, and stuffed with rags in the upper. Gradations of wretchedness which I have observed in the cow-gate and west port at Edinburgh. Here are shoeless women, who quiet their children with ardent spirits, and brutal men, who would kill both wives and children if they dared. Here are dust heaps in which pigs with long snouts are ever routing. Here are lean currs, wrangling with each other for leaner bones. Here are ditches and puddles, and heaps of oyster shells, and broken crockery and cabbage stalks, and fragments of hats and shoes. Here are torn notices on the walls offering rewards for the apprehension of thieves and murderers, painfully suggestive of dark deeds. A little further are lumber-yards and wharves, and mud and saw-dust, and dealers in old nails and rags and bones, and rotten posts and rails and attempts at grass. Here are old barrel-hoops, and patches of old sails, and dead bushes and dead dogs, and old saucepens, and little plots of ground where cabbages and pumpkins drag on a pining existence. And then there is the River Charles, no longer clear and bright as when trees and hills and flowers were mirrored on its surface, but fowl, turbid and polluted, with shipyards and steam-enges and cranes and windlasses on its margin, and here Quebec ends. From the rich, the fashionable, and the pleasure-seeking suburb of St. Louis, few venture down into the quarter of St. Rock, save those who, at the risk of drawing in pestilence with every breath, mindful of their duty to God and man, enter those hideous dwellings, ministering to mines and bodies alike diseased. My first visit to St. Rock was on a Sunday afternoon. I had attended our own simple and beautiful service in the morning, and had seen the celebration of vespers in the Romish Cathedral in the afternoon. Each church was thronged with well-dressed persons. It was a glorious day. The fashionable promenades were all crowded, gay uniforms and brilliant parasols thronged the ramparts, horsemen were cantering along St. Louis Street, priestly processions passed to and from the different churches, members of Colossus containing pleasure parties were dashing about, picnic parties were returning from Montmorency and Lake Charles, groups of vivacious talkers, speaking in the language of France, were at every street corner, Quebec had all the appearance so painful to an English or Scottish eye of a continental Sabbath. Mr. and Mrs. Alderson and myself left this gay scene, and the constant toll of Romish bells per St. Rock. They had lived peacefully in a rural part of Devonshire, and more recently in one of the prettiest and most thriving of the American cities. And when they first breathed the polluted air, they were desirous to return from what promised to be so peculiarly unpleasant, but kindly yielded to my desire to see something of the shady as well as the sunny side of Quebec. No Sabbath day with its hallowed accompaniment seemed to have dawn upon the inhabitants of St. Rock. We saw women with tangled hair standing in the streets, and men with pallid countenances and bloodshot eyes were reeling about, or sitting with their heads resting on their hands, looking out from windows stuffed with rags. There were children, too, children in nothing but the name and stature, infancy without innocence, learning to take God's name in vain with its first lisping accents, preparing for a maturity of suffering and shame. I looked at these hideous houses, and hideous men and women, too, and at their still more repulsive progeny, with shallow faces, dwarved forms, and countenances precocious in the intelligence of villainy, and contrasted them with the blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked infants of my English home, who chased butterflies and weave May garlands, and gather cow slips and butter-cups, or the sallow-children of a Highland shanty, who devour instruction in mud-floored huts, and con their tasks on the heathery sides of hills. Yet, when you breathe the poisoned air laden with everything noxious to health, and have the physical and moral senses alike met with everything that can disgust and offend, it ceases to be a matter of wonder that the fair, tender plant of beautiful childhood refuses to grow in such a vitiated atmosphere. Here all distinctions between good and evil are speedily lost, if they were ever known, and men, women, and children become unnatural in vice, in irreligion, in manners and appearance. Such spots as these act like cankers, yearly spreading further and further their vitiating influences, preparing for all those fearful retributions in the shape of fever and pestilence which continually come down. Yet lamentable as the state of such a population is, considered merely with regard to this world, it becomes fearful when we recollect that the wheels of time are ceaselessly rolling on, bearing how few alas to heaven, what myriads to hell, and that when this trembling consciousness of being which clings enamored to its anguish, not because life is sweet, but because death is bitter, is over, there remains, for those who have known nothing on earth but misery and vice, a fearful-looking thing for judgment and fiery indignation, when they that have done evil shall rise to the resurrection of damnation. It was not that the miserable, degraded appearance of St. Rock was anything new to me. Unfortunately the same state of things exists in a far greater degree in our large towns at home. What did surprise me was, to find it in the new world, and that such a gigantic evil should have required only two hundred years for its growth. It seemed to me, also, that Quebec, the gulf which separates the two worlds, is greater, even than that which lies between Belgravia and Bethnal Green or St. Giles's. The people who live in the lower town are principally employed on the wharves and in the lumber trade. But my readers will not thank me for detaining them in a pastiferous atmosphere among such unpleasing scenes. We will therefore ascend to the high street of the city, resplendent with gorgeous mercer's stores and articles of luxury of every description. This street and several others were at this period impassable for carriages, the roadways being tunneled and heaped and barricaded, which curious and disagreeable state of things was stated to rise from the laying down of water pipes. At night when fires were lighted in the narrow streets and groups of roughly dressed Frenchmen were standing round them, Quebec presented the appearance of the Faborg Saint Antoine after a revolution. Quebec is a most picturesque city externally and internally. From the citadel, which stands on a rock more than three hundred feet high, down to the crowded waterside, bustling with merchants, porters and lumbermen, all is novel and original. Massive fortifications, with guns grinning from the embracers, form a very prominent feature. A broad glacis looks peaceful in its greenness, ramparts line the plains of Abraham, guards and sentries appear in all directions, nightfall brings with it the challenge who goes there, and narrow gateways form inconvenient entrances to streets so steep that I wondered how mortal horses could ever toil up them. The streets are ever thronged with vehicles, particularly with rude carts drawn by rough horses driven by French peasants who move stolidly along, indifferent to the continual cry of Placodome. The stores generally have French designations above them. The shopmen often speak very imperfect English. The names of the streets are French, Romish churches and commons abound, and sisters of charity, unwirried in their benevolence, are to be seen visiting the afflicted. Houses and cautions are posted up both in French and English. The light, vivacious tones of the French Canadians are everywhere heard, and from the pillars sacred to the memory of wolf upon the plains of Abraham, down to the red-coated sentry who challenges you upon the ramparts, everything tells of a conquered province, and of the time not so very far distant either, when the lilies of France occupied the place from which the flag of England now so proudly waves. I spent a few days at Russell's Hotel, which was very full in spite of the rats. In Canadian hotels people are very sociable, and as many, during the season, make Russell's there abode, the conversation was tolerably general at dinner. Many of the members of Parliament lived there, and they used to tell very racy and amusing stories against each other. I heard one which was considered a proof of the truth of the saying that the tailor makes the gentleman. A gentleman called on a Mr. M., who had been appointed to a place in the government, and in due time he went to return the visit. Being an Irishman in the street, he asked, Where does Mr. Smith lived? It's no use you're going there. I want to know where he lives, do you know? Faith, I do, but it's no use you're going there. Mr. M., now getting angry, said, I didn't ask you for your advice. I simply want to know where Mr. Smith lives. Well, Spalpeen, he lives down at that court. But I tell you, it's no use you're going there, for I've just been there myself, and he's got a man. It is said that the disconfited senator returned home and bought a new hat. Coming out by the citadel, the plains of Abraham, now a race course, are entered upon, the battlefield being denoted by a simple monument bearing the inscription, Here Died Wolf Victorious. Beyond this, three miles from the city, is Spencer Wood, the residence of the Governor-General. It is beautifully situated, though the house is not spacious, and is rather old-fashioned. The ballroom, however, built by Lord Elgin, is a beautiful room, very large, admirably proportioned, and chastely decorated. Here a kind of vise regal court is held, and during the latter months of Lord Elgin's tenure of office, Spencer Wood was the scene of a continued round of gaiety and hospitality. Lord Elgin was considered extremely popular. The reciprocity treaty, supposed to confer great benefits on the country, was passed during his administration, and the resources of Canada were prodigiously developed, and its revenue greatly increased. Of his popularity at Quebec there could be no question. He was attached to the Canadians with whom he mixed with the greatest kindness and affability. Far from his presence being considered a restraint at an evening party, the entrance of the Governor in his suite was always the signal for increased animation and liveliness. The stiffness, which was said to pervade in former times the parties at Spencer Wood, was entirely removed by him, and in addition to large balls and dinner parties at the time I was in Quebec, he gave evening parties to eighty or a hundred persons twice a week, when the greatest sociability prevailed, and in addition to dancing, which was kept up on those occasions till two or three in the morning, games such as French Blind Men's Bluff were introduced to the great delight of both old and young. The pleasure with which this innovation was received by the lively and mirth-loving Canadians showed the difference in character between themselves and the American ladies. I was afterwards at a party in New York where a gentleman who had been at Spencer Wood attempted to introduce one of these games, but it was received with gravity and proved a signal failure. Lord Elgin certainly attained that end which is too frequently lost side of in society, making people enjoy themselves. Personally, I may speak with much gratitude of his kindness during the short but very severe illness with which I was attacked while at Spencer Wood. Glittering epaulettes, scarlet uniforms, and muslin dresses whirled before my dizzy eyes. I lost for a moment the power to articulate. A deathly chill came over me. I shivered, staggered, and would have fallen had I not been supported. I was carried upstairs, feeling sure that the terrible pestilence which I had so carefully avoided had at length seized me. The medical man arrived at two in the morning and ordered the remedies which were usually employed at Quebec. A complete envelope of mustard-plasters, a perfusion of blankets, and as much ice as I could possibly eat. The physician told me that cholera had again appeared in St. Rock, where I, strangely enough, had been on two successive afternoons. So great was the panic caused by the cholera that wherever it was necessary to account for my disappearance Lord Elgin did so by saying that I was attacked with awe. The means used were blessed by a kind provenance to the removal of the malady, and in two or three days I was able to go about again, though I suffered severely for several subsequent weeks. From Spencer Wood I went to the house of the honourable John Ross, from whom and from Mrs. Ross I received the greatest kindness, kindness which should make my recollections of Quebec lastingly agreeable. Sir Ross's public situation as President of the Legislative Council gave me an opportunity of seeing many persons whose acquaintance I should not have made under other circumstances. And as parties were given every evening but one while I was at Quebec, to which I was invited with my hosts, I saw as much of its society as under ordinary circumstances I should have seen in a year. No position is pleasanter than that of an English stranger in Canada with good introductions. I received much kindness from Dr. Mountain, the venerable Protestant Bishop of Quebec. He is well known as having, when Bishop of Montreal undertaken an adventurous journey to the Red River Settlements, for the purposes of ordination and confirmation. He performed the journey in an open canoe manned by French foyer jurors and Indians. They went up the Ottawa, then by wild lakes and rivers into Lake Huron, through the labyrinth of islands in the Georgian Bay, and by the Sault Ste. Marie into Lake Superior, then an almost introverse sheet of deep, dreary water. Thence they went up the Rainy River, and by almost unknown streams and lakes to their journey's end. They generally rested at night, lighting large fires by their tents, and were tormented by venomous insects. At the mission settlements on the Red River the bishop was received with great delight by the Christianized Indians, who, in neat clothing and with books in their hands, assembled at the little church. The number of persons confirmed was eight hundred and forty-six, and there were likewise two ordinations. The stay of the bishop at the Red River was only three weeks, and he accomplished his enterprising journey of two thousand miles and six weeks. He is one of the most unaustentatious persons possible. It was not until he presented me with a volume containing an account of his visitation that I was aware that he was the prelate, with the account of whose zeal and Christian devotedness I had long been familiar. He is now an aged man, and his countenance tells of the love which looks kindly and the wisdom which looks soberly on all things. CHAPTER XIII. One of the sites of Quebec, to me decidedly the most interesting one, was the House of Assembly. The legislature were burned out of their house at Montreal, and more recently out of a very handsome one at Quebec. It is to be hoped this august body will be more fortunate at Toronto the present place of meeting. The temporary place of sitting at Quebec seemed to me more perfectly adapted for the purposes of hearing, seeing, and speaking. It is a spacious apartment with deep galleries which hold about five hundred round it, which were, to Quebec, what the opera and the clubhouses are to London. In fact these galleries were crowded every night, and certainly when I was there fully one half of their occupants were ladies, who could see and be seen. The presence of ladies may have an effect in preventing the use of very intemperate language, and though it is maliciously said that some of the younger members speak more for the galleries than the house, and though some gallant individual may occasionally step upstairs to restore a truant handkerchief, or boa to the fair owner, the distractions caused by their presence are very inconsiderable, and the arrangements for their comfort are a great reflection upon the miserable, laddest whole to which lady listeners are condemned in the English House of Commons. I must remark also that the house was well warmed and ventilated, without the aid of alternating Syracos and North Winds. The speaker's chair, on a dais and covered with a canopy, was facing us, in which reclined the speaker in his robes. In front of him was a table at which sat two black-robed clerks, and on which a huge mace were posed, and behind him was the reporter's gallery where the gentlemen of the press seemed to be most comfortably accommodated. There was a large open space in front of this table, extending to the bar at which were seated the messengers of the house, and the sergeant at arms with his sword. On either side of this open space were four rows of handsome desks, and Morocco's seats to accommodate two members each, who sat as most amiable Gemini. The floor was richly carpeted, and the desks covered with crimson cloth, and with the well-managed flood of light the room was very complete. The Canadian Constitution is as nearly a transcript of our own as anything colonial can be. The Governor can do no wrong. He must have a responsible Cabinet taken from the members of the legislature. His administration must have a working majority, as in England, and he must bow to public opinion by changing his advisers, when the representatives of the people lose confidence in the government. The Legislative Council represents our House of Peers, and the Legislative Assembly, or Provincial Parliament, our House of Commons. The Upper House is appointed by the Crown, under the advice of the Ministry of the Day, but as a clamour has been raised against it as yielding too readily to the demands of the Lower House, a measure has been brought in for making its members elective for a term of years. If this change were carried, coupled with others on which it would not interest the English reader to dwell, it would bring about an approximation of the Canadian Constitution to that of the United States. On one night, on which I had the pleasure of attending the House, the subject under discussion was the Romish holidays, as connected with certain mercantile transactions. It sounds dry enough that, as the debate was turned into an extremely interesting religious discussion, it was well worth hearing, and the crowded galleries remained in a state of questions. Mr. Hanks, the late Premier, was speaking when we went in. He is by no means eloquent but very pointed in his observations, and there is an amount of logical sequence in his speaking which is worthy of imitation elsewhere. He is a remarkable man, and will probably play a prominent part in the future political history of Canada. He is the son of a Presbyterian minister at Cork, and emigrated to Toronto in 1832. During Lord Durham's administration he became editor of the Examiner newspaper, and entered the Parliament of the United Provinces in 1841. He afterwards filled the important position of Inspector-general of Finances, and finally became Prime Minister. His administration was, however, overturned early in 1854, and sundry grave charges were brought against him. He spoke in favour of abolition of the privileges conceded to Romish holidays, and was followed by several French Canadians, two of them of the rogue party, who spoke against the measure, one of them so eloquently as to remind me of the historical days of the jurundists. Mr. Lyon Mackenzie, who led the rebellion, which was so happily checked at Toronto, and narrowly escaped, condemned punishment, followed and diverged from the question of promissory notes to the Russian war and other subjects, and when loud cries of question, question, order, order arose he tore up his notes, and sat down abruptly in a most theatrical manner, amid bursts of laughter from both floor and galleries, for he appears to be the privileged buffoon of the house. The appearance of the house is rather imposing. The members behave with extraordinary decorum, and to people accustomed to the noises and unseemly interruptions which characterise the British House of Commons, the silence and order of the Canadian House are very agreeable. The members seem to give full attention to the debate, very few were writing, and none were reading anything except parliamentary papers, and no speaker was interrupted except on one occasion. There was extremely little walking about. But I observed one gentleman, a notorious exquisite, cross the floor several times, apparently with no other object than that of displaying his fine person in bowing profoundly to the speaker. The gentlemanly appearance of the members, taken altogether, did not escape my notice. Sir Alan McNabb, the present Premier, is the head of a coalition ministry. Fortunately, it is not necessary to offer any remarks upon its policy, and Canada, following the example of the mother country, submits quietly to a coalition. The opposition, which is formed of the Liberal Party, is seated opposite the government, fronted by Mr. Lyon McKenzie, who gives a wavering adherence to every party in secession, and is often indignantly disavowed by all. The Liberals of Upper Canada are ably led by Mr. George Brown, who excels in a highly lucid, powerful, and perspicuous course of reasoning which cannot fail to produce an effect. Often there is the Rouge Party, led by the member for Montreal, which is principally composed of very versatile and enthusiastic Frenchmen, of rather indefinite opinions and aims, professing a creed which appears a curious compound of republicanism and rationalism. The word Latitudinarianism defines it best. There are 130 members divided into numerousists and aides. Most of the members for Lower Canada are French, and consequently the Romish Party is a very powerful one in the House. Taken as a whole, the members are loyal and have proved their attachment to England by a vote of twenty thousand pounds for the Patriotic Fund. I think that all who are in the habit of reading the debates will allow that the speaking in the House will bear comparison with that in our House of Commons, and if some of the younger members in attempting the sublime occasionally attain the ridiculous and mistake extravagance of expression for greatness of thought. These are faults which time and criticism were remedy. Canada is a great and prosperous country, and its legislative assembly is very creditable to so young a community. Bribery, corruption, and place-hunting are alleged against this body, but as these vices are largely developed in England, it would be bad taste to remark upon them, particularly as the most ardent correctors of abuses now reluctantly allow that they are inseparable from popular assemblies. It is needless to speak of the upper House, which, as has been sarcastically remarked of our House of Peers, is merely a high court of registry. It remains to be seen whether an elective chamber would possess a greater vitality and independence. The speaker of the legislative assembly is a Frenchman, and French and English are used indiscriminately in debate. Parliamentary notices and papers are also printed in both languages. It was a cold, gloomy October morning, a cold East wind rustled the russet leaves, and a heavy dry fog enveloped point diamond when I left the bustle of Quebec for a quiet drive to Montmorency in a light wagon with a very spirited little horse, a young lady acting as charioteer. The little animal was very impetuous, and rattled down the steep, crowded streets of Quebec at a pace which threatened to entangle our wheels with those of numerous carts driven by apathetic habitons who were perfectly indifferent to the admonitions, preneigar and plassodame, delivered in beseeching tomes. We passed down a steep street and threw Pallas gate into the district of St. Rock, teeming with Irish and dirt, for I fear it is a fact that, wherever you have the first, you invariably have the last. Beyond this there was a space covered with mud and sawdust, where two habitons were furiously quarreling. One sprang upon the other like a hyena, knocked him down, and then attempted to bite and strangle him amid the applause of numerous spectators. Leaving Quebec behind, we drove for seven miles along a road inside of the lesser branch of the St. Lawrence, which has, on the other side, the green and fertile island of Orléans. The houses along this road are so numerous as to present the appearance of a village the whole way. Frenchmen who arrive here in summer can scarcely believe that they are not in their own sunny land. The external characteristics of the country are so exactly similar. These dwellings are large, whitewashed, and many windowed, and are always surrounded with balconies. The doors are reached by flights of steps, in order that they may be above the level of the snow in winter. The rooms are clean, but large and desolate-looking, and are generally ornamented with caricatures of the Virgin and uncouth representations of miracles. The women dress in the French style and wear large straw hats out of doors, which were the source of constant disappointments to me, for I always expected to see a young, if not a pretty, face under the broad brim, and these females were remarkably ill-favored, their complexions hardened, wrinkled, and bronzed, from the effects of hard toil and the extremes of heat and cold. I heard the hum of spinning wheels from many of the houses, for these industrious women spin their household linen, and the gray homespun in which the men are clothed. The furniture is antique, and made of oak, and looks as if it had been handed down from generation to generation. The men, largely assisted by the females, cultivate small plots of ground, and totally disregard all modern improvements. These French towns and villages improve but little. Popery, that great antidote to social progress, is the creed universally professed, and generally the only building of any pretensions is a large, rome-ish church, with two lofty spires of polished tin. Education is not much prized. The desires of the simple habitants are limited to the attainment of a competence for life, and this their rudely tilled farms supply them with. Few emigrants make this part of Canada even a temporary resting place. The severity of the climate, the language, the religion, and the laws are all against them. Hence, though a professor of a pure faith may well bless to confess it, the vices which emigrants bring with them are unknown. These peasants are among the most harmless people under the sun. They are moral, sober, and contented, and zealous in the observances of their erroneous creed. Their children divide the land, and as each prefers a piece of soil adjoining the road or river, strips of soil may occasionally be seen only a few yards in width. They strive after happiness rather than advancement, and who shall say that they are unsuccessful in their aim? As their fathers lived, so they live, each generation has the simplicity and superstition of the preceding one. In the autumn they gather in their scanty harvest, and in the long winter they spin and dance round their stove sides. On Sundays and Saints' days they assemble in crowds in their churches, dressed in the style of a hundred years since. Their wants and wishes are few, their manners are courteous and unsuspicious. They hold their faith with a blind and unpleasant credulity, and on summer evenings sing the songs of France as their fathers sang them in by-gone days on the smiling banks of the rushing rhone. The road along which the dwellings of these small farmers lie is macadamized, and occasionally a cross stands by the roadside, at which devotees may be seen to prostrate themselves. There is a quiet, lethargic, old-world air about the country, running strangely with the bustling, hurrying, restless progress of Upper Canada. Though the condition of the habitons is extremely unprofitable to themselves, it affords a short rest to the thinking and observing faculties of the stranger, overstrained as they are with taking in and contemplating the railroad progress of things in the New World. While we admire and wonder at the vast material progress of Western Canada and the Northwestern states of the Union, Britain's fraught with alarm will force themselves upon us. We think that great progress is being made in England, but without having traveled in America it is scarcely possible to believe what the Anglo-Saxon race is performing upon a new soil. In America we do not meet with factory operatives, seamstresses, or clerks overworked and underpaid, toiling their lives away in order to keep body and soul together. But we have people of all classes who could obtain competence and often affluence by moderate exertions, working harder than slaves, sacrificing home enjoyments, pleasure, and health itself to the one desire of the acquisition of wealth. Daring speculations fail, the struggle in unnatural competition with men of large capital or dishonorable dealings wears out at last the over-tasked frame. Life is spent in a whirl, death summons them and finds them unprepared. Everybody who has any settled business is overworked. Voices of men crying for relaxation are heard from every quarter, yet none dare to pause in this race which they so madly run, in which happiness and mental and bodily health are among the least of their considerations. All are spurred on by the real or imaginary necessities of their position, driven along their headlong course by avarice, ambition, or eager competition. The falls of Montmorency, which we reached after a drive of five-eight miles, are beautiful in the extreme, and as the day was too cold for picnic parties, we had them all to ourselves. There is no great body of water, but the river takes an unbroken leap of two hundred and eighty feet from a black, narrow gorge. The scathed black cliffs descend in one sweep to the St. Lawrence, in fine contrast to the snowy whiteness of the fall. Montmorency gave me a greater sensation of pleasure than Niagara. There are no mills, museums, guides, or curiosity shops. Whatever there is of beauty bears the fair impress of its creator's hand, and if these falls are beautiful on a late October day, when a chill east wind was howling through leafless trees, looming through a cold gray fog, what must they be in the burst of spring or the glowing luxuriance of summer? We drove back for some distance and entered a small cabaret, where some women were diligently engaged in spinning, and some men were super-intending with intense interest the preparation of some soup-magra. Their patois was scarcely intelligible, and a boy whom we took as our guide spoke no English. After encountering some high fences and swampy ground, we came to a narrow, rocky pathway in a wood, with bright green, moss-covered trees, stones, and earth. On descending a rocky bank we came to the natural staircase, where the rapid Montmorency forces its way through a bed of limestone, the broken but extremely regular appearance of the layers being very much like wide steps. The scene at this place is wildly beautiful. The river, frequently only a few feet in width, sometimes foams furiously along between precipices covered with trees, and bearing the marks of years of attrition, then buries itself in dark gulfs or rest-questiont for a moment in still-black pools before it reaches its final leap. The day before I left Quebec I went to the romantic falls of Lorette, about thirteen miles from the city. It was a beauteous day. I should have called it oppressively warm, but that the air was fanned by a cool west wind. The Indian summer had come at last. The Sagamores of the tribes had lighted their council-fires on the western prairies. What would we not give for such a season? It is the rekindling of summer, but without its heat. It is autumn in its glories, but without its gloom. The air is soft like the breath of May. Everything is veiled in a soft, pure haze, and the sky is of a faint and misty blue. A mysterious fascination seemed to bind us to set rock, for we kept missing our way and getting into streams as black as sticks. But at length the city of Quebec, with its green glasses and frowning battlements, was left behind, and we drove through flat country abounding in old stone dwelling-houses, old farms, and large fields of stubble. We neared the blue hills and put up our horses in the Indian village of Lorette. Beautiful Lorette, I must not describe, for I cannot, how its river escapes from under the romantic bridge in a broad sheet of milk-white foam, and then, contracted between sullen barriers of rock, seeks the deep shade of the pine-clad precipices, and hastens to lose itself there. It is perfection and beauty and peace, and the rocky walks upon its forest-covered crags might be in Switzerland. Being deserted by the gentlemen of the party, my fair young companion and I found our way to Lorette, which is a large village built by government for the Indians, but by intermarrying with the French they have lost nearly all their distinctive characteristics, and the next generation will not even speak the Indian language. Here, as in every village in Lower Canada, there is a large Romish church, ornamented with gaudy paintings. We visited some of the squaws who wear the Indian dress, and we made a few purchases. We were afterwards beset by Indian boys with bows and arrows of clumsy construction, but they took excellent aim, incited by the reward of coppers which we offered to them. It is grievous to see the remnants of an ancient race in such a degraded state, the more so as I believe that there is no intellectual inferiority as an obstacle to their improvement. I saw some drawings by an Indian youth which evinced considerable talent, one, in particular, a likeness of Lord Elgin, was admirably executed. I have understood that there is scarcely a greater difference between these half-breeds and the warlike tribes of Central America than between them and the Christian Indians of the Red River settlements. There are about fourteen thousand Indians in Canada, few of them in a state of great poverty, for they possess annuities arriving from the sale of their lands. They have no incentive to exertion and spend their time in shooting, fishing, and drinking spirits and taverns, where they speedily acquire the vices of the white men without their habits of industry and enterprise. They have no idols and seldom enter into hostile opposition to Christianity, readily exchanging the worship of the great spirit for its tenants as far as convenient. It is very difficult, however, to arouse them to a sense of sin or to any idea of the importance of the world to come. But at the same time in no part of the world have missionary labors been more blessed than at the Red River settlements. Great changes have passed before their eyes. Year as it succeeds year sees them driven farther west as their hunting grounds are absorbed by the insatiate white races. The twang of the Indian bow and the sharp report of the Indian rifle are exchanged for the clink of the lumberer's axe and the glang of the sturdy settler. The corn waves and luxuriant crops overland once covered with the forest haunts of the moose, and the waters of lakes over which the red man paddled in his bark canoe are now plowed by crowded steamers. Where the bark dwellings of his father stood the locomotive darts away on its iron road, and the helpless Indian looks on aghast at the power and resources of the pale-faced invaders of his soil. The boat by which I was to leave Quebec was to sail on the afternoon of the day on which I visited Lorette, but was detained till the evening by the Postmaster General when a heavy fog came on which prevented its departure till the next morning. The smallpox had broken out in the city and rumors of cholera had reached and alarmed the gay inhabitants of St. Louis. I never saw terror so unrestrainedly developed as among some ladies on hearing of the return of the pestilence. One of them went into hysterics and became so seriously ill that it was considered necessary for her to leave Quebec on the same evening. In consequence of the delay of the boat it was on a Sunday morning that I bade a jus to Quebec. I had never traveled on a Sunday before and should not have done so on this occasion had it not been a matter of necessity. I am happy to state that no boats run on the St. Lorette's on the Sabbath and the enforced sailing of the John Munn caused a great deal of grumbling among the stewards and crew. The streets were thronged with people going early to mass and to a special service held to avert the heavy judgments which it was feared were impending over the city. The boat was full and many persons who were flying from the cholera had slept on board. I took a regretful farewell of my friends and with them of the beautiful Quebec. I had met with much of kindness and hospitality, but still I must confess that the excessive gaiety and bustle of the city exercise a depressing influence. People appear absorbed by the fleeting pleasures of the hour. The attractions of this life seem to overbalance the importance of the life to come, and among the poor there is a large amount of sin and sorrow, too many who enter into the world without a blessing and depart from it without a hope. The bright sun of the Indian summer poured down its flood of light upon the castled steep, and a faint blue mist was diffused over the scene of beauty. Long undulating lines showed where the blue hills rose above the green island of Orléans and slept in the haze of that gorgeous season. Not a breath of wind stirred the heavy folds of the flag of England on the citadel, or ruffled the sleeping St. Lawrence, or the shadows of the countless ships on its surface, and the chimes of the bells of the Romish churches floated gently over the water. Such a morning as I have seldom seen, and Quebec lay basking in beauty. Surely that morning sun shone upon no fairer city. The genial rays of that autumn sun were typical of the warm kind hearts I was leaving behind, who had welcomed a stranger to their hospitable homes, and as the bell rang and the paddles revolved in the still deep water, a feeling of sorrow came over my heart when I reflected that the friendly voices might never again sound in my ear, and that the sunshine which was then glittering upon the fortress city might, to my eyes, glitter upon it no more. The John Munn was a very handsome boat, fitted up with that prodigality which I have elsewhere described as characteristic of the American steamers, but in the course of investigation I came upon the steerage, or that part of the middle floor which is devoted to the poorer class of immigrants, of whom five hundred had landed at Quebec only the day before. The spectacle here was extremely annoying, for men, women and children were crowded together in an ill-ventilated space, with kettles, saucepins, blankets, bedding, and large blue boxes. There was a bar for the sale of spirits, which I fear was very much frequented, for towards night there were sounds of swearing, fighting, and scuffling, proceeding from this objectionable locality. A day-boat was such a rare occurrence that some of the citizens of Quebec took the journey merely to make acquaintance with the beauties of their own river. We passed the heights of Abraham and Wolf's Cove, famous in history, wooded slopes and beautiful villas, the Chaudière River, and its pine-hung banks, but I was so ill that even the beauty of the St. Lawrence could not detain me in the saloon, and I went down into the ladies' cabin where I spent the rest of the day on a sofa wrapped in blankets. A good many of the ladies came downstairs to avoid some quadrilles which a French-Canadian lady was playing, and a friend of mine, Colonel P., having told someone that I had had the cholera, there was a good deal of mysterious buzzing and consequence, of which I only heard a few observations, such as, how very imprudent, how very wrong to come into a public conveyance, just as we were trying to leave it behind, too. But I was too ill to be amused, even when one lady went so far as to remove the blanket to look at my face. There was a very pale and nervous-looking young lady lying on a sofa opposite, staring fixedly at me. Suddenly she got up and asked me if I were very ill. I replied that I had been so. She's had the cholera, poor thing, the stewardess unfortunately observed. The cholera, she said within a frighted look, and hastily, putting on her bonnet, vanished from the cabin, and never came down again. She had left Quebec because of the cholera, having previously made inquiries as to whether any one had died of it in the John Munn. And now, being brought, as she fancied, into contact with it, her imagination was so strongly affected that she was soon taken seriously ill, and Brandy and Laudanum were in requisition. So great was the fear of contagion that, though the bolt was so full that many people had to sleep on sofas, no one would share a state room with me. We were delayed by fog, and did not reach Montreal till one in the morning. I found Montreal as warm and damp as it had been cold and bracing on my first visit, but the air was not warmer than the welcome which I recede. Kind and tempting was the invitation to prolong my stay at the sea-house. Enticing was the prospect offered me of a visit to a cignolerie on the Ottawa, and it was with very great reluctance, after a sojourn of only one day, I left the subode of refinement and hospitality, and the valued friends who had received me with so much kindness for a tedious journey to New York. I left the sea-house at five o'clock on the last day of October, so ill that I could scarcely speak or stand. It was pitch-dark and the rain was pouring in torrents. The high wind blew out the lamp which was held at the door, an unpropitious commencement of a journey. Something was wrong with the harness, the uncouth vehicle was nearly upset backwards, the steam-fairy was the height of bloom, heated to a stifling extent, and full of people with oil-skin coats and dripping umbrellas. We crossed the rushing St. Lawrence just as the yellow gas-lights of Montreal were struggling with the pale, murky dawn of an autumn morning, and reached the cars on the other side before it was light enough to see objects distinctly. Here the servant who had been kindly sent with me left me, and the few hours which were to elapse before I should join my friends seemed to present insurmountable difficulties. The people in the cars were French, the names of the stations were French, and Prenez-Garde de la locomotive denoted the crossings. How the laisse-faire habits of the habitants must be outraged by the clatter of a steam-engine passing their dwellings at a speed of thirty-five miles an hour. Yet these very habitants were talking in the most unconcerned manner in French about a railway accident in Upper Canada by which forty-eight persons were killed. After a journey of two hours I reached Rousse's Point, and entering a handsome steamer on Lake Champlain took leave of the British dominions. Before re-entering the territory of the stars and stripes I will offer a few concluding remarks on Canada.