Johns,
and one or two more elsewhere in Canada, wearing homespun gray
greatcoats, or capotes, with conical and comical hoods, which fell
back between their shoulders like small bags, ready to be turned up
over the head when occasion required, though a hat usurped that place
now.
and one or two more elsewhere in Canada, wearing homespun gray
greatcoats, or capotes, with conical and comical hoods, which fell
back between their shoulders like small bags, ready to be turned up
over the head when occasion required, though a hat usurped that place
now.
Thoreau - Excursions and Poems
He could not have imagined how dead he would be in a few
years, and all the more dead and forgotten for being buried under such
a mass of gloomy stone, where not even memory could get at him without
a crowbar. Ah! poor man, with that last end of his! However, he may
have been the worthiest of mortals for aught that I know. From the
mountain-top we got a view of the whole city; the flat, fertile,
extensive island; the noble sea of the St. Lawrence swelling into
lakes; the mountains about St. Hyacinthe, and in Vermont and New York;
and the mouth of the Ottawa in the west, overlooking that St. Anne's
where the voyageur sings his "parting hymn," and bids adieu to
civilization,--a name, thanks to Moore's verses, the most suggestive
of poetic associations of any in Canada. We, too, climbed the hill
which Cartier, first of white men, ascended, and named Mont-real (the
3d of October, O. S. , 1535), and, like him, "we saw the said river as
far as we could see, _grand_, _large_, _et spacieux_, going to
the southwest," toward that land whither Donnacona had told the
discoverer that he had been a month's journey from Canada, where there
grew "_force Canelle et Girofle_," much cinnamon and cloves, and where
also, as the natives told him, were three great lakes and afterward
_une mer douce_,--a sweet sea,--_de laquelle n'est mention avoir vu le
bout_, of which there is no mention to have seen the end. But instead
of an Indian town far in the interior of a new world, with guides to
show us where the river came from, we found a splendid and bustling
stone-built city of white men, and only a few squalid Indians offered
to sell us baskets at the Lachine Railroad Depot, and Hochelaga is,
perchance, but the fancy name of an engine company or an eating-house.
[Illustration: _Montreal from Mount Royal_]
We left Montreal Wednesday, the 2d of October, late in the afternoon.
In the La Prairie cars the Yankees made themselves merry, imitating
the cries of the charette-drivers to perfection, greatly to the
amusement of some French-Canadian travelers, and they kept it up all
the way to Boston. I saw one person on board the boat at St.
Johns,
and one or two more elsewhere in Canada, wearing homespun gray
greatcoats, or capotes, with conical and comical hoods, which fell
back between their shoulders like small bags, ready to be turned up
over the head when occasion required, though a hat usurped that place
now. They looked as if they would be convenient and proper enough as
long as the coats were new and tidy, but would soon come to have a
beggarly and unsightly look, akin to rags and dust-holes. We reached
Burlington early in the morning, where the Yankees tried to pass off
their Canada coppers, but the newsboys knew better. Returning through
the Green Mountains, I was reminded that I had not seen in Canada such
brilliant autumnal tints as I had previously seen in Vermont. Perhaps
there was not yet so great and sudden a contrast with the summer heats
in the former country as in these mountain valleys. As we were passing
through Ashburnham, by a new white house which stood at some distance
in a field, one passenger exclaimed, so that all in the car could hear
him, "There, there's not so good a house as that in all Canada! " I did
not much wonder at his remark, for there is a neatness, as well as
evident prosperity, a certain elastic easiness of circumstances, so to
speak, when not rich, about a New England house, as if the proprietor
could at least afford to make repairs in the spring, which the
Canadian houses do not suggest. Though of stone, they are no better
constructed than a stone barn would be with us; the only building,
except the chateau, on which money and taste are expended, being the
church. In Canada an ordinary New England house would be mistaken for
the chateau, and while every village here contains at least several
gentlemen or "squires," _there_ there is but one to a seigniory.
I got home this Thursday evening, having spent just one week in Canada
and traveled eleven hundred miles. The whole expense of this journey,
including two guide-books and a map, which cost one dollar twelve and
a half cents, was twelve dollars seventy-five cents. I do not suppose
that I have seen all British America; that could not be done by a
cheap excursion, unless it were a cheap excursion to the Icy Sea, as
seen by Hearne or Mackenzie, and then, no doubt, some interesting
features would be omitted. I wished to go a little way behind the word
_Canadense_, of which naturalists make such frequent use; and I should
like still right well to make a longer excursion on foot through the
wilder parts of Canada, which perhaps might be called _Iter
Canadense_.
NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS[3]
Books of natural history make the most cheerful winter reading. I read
in Audubon with a thrill of delight, when the snow covers the ground,
of the magnolia, and the Florida keys, and their warm sea-breezes; of
the fence-rail, and the cotton-tree, and the migrations of the
rice-bird; of the breaking up of winter in Labrador, and the melting
of the snow on the forks of the Missouri; and owe an accession of
health to these reminiscences of luxuriant nature.
Within the circuit of this plodding life,
There enter moments of an azure hue,
Untarnished fair as is the violet
Or anemone, when the spring strews them
By some meandering rivulet, which make
The best philosophy untrue that aims
But to console man for his grievances.
years, and all the more dead and forgotten for being buried under such
a mass of gloomy stone, where not even memory could get at him without
a crowbar. Ah! poor man, with that last end of his! However, he may
have been the worthiest of mortals for aught that I know. From the
mountain-top we got a view of the whole city; the flat, fertile,
extensive island; the noble sea of the St. Lawrence swelling into
lakes; the mountains about St. Hyacinthe, and in Vermont and New York;
and the mouth of the Ottawa in the west, overlooking that St. Anne's
where the voyageur sings his "parting hymn," and bids adieu to
civilization,--a name, thanks to Moore's verses, the most suggestive
of poetic associations of any in Canada. We, too, climbed the hill
which Cartier, first of white men, ascended, and named Mont-real (the
3d of October, O. S. , 1535), and, like him, "we saw the said river as
far as we could see, _grand_, _large_, _et spacieux_, going to
the southwest," toward that land whither Donnacona had told the
discoverer that he had been a month's journey from Canada, where there
grew "_force Canelle et Girofle_," much cinnamon and cloves, and where
also, as the natives told him, were three great lakes and afterward
_une mer douce_,--a sweet sea,--_de laquelle n'est mention avoir vu le
bout_, of which there is no mention to have seen the end. But instead
of an Indian town far in the interior of a new world, with guides to
show us where the river came from, we found a splendid and bustling
stone-built city of white men, and only a few squalid Indians offered
to sell us baskets at the Lachine Railroad Depot, and Hochelaga is,
perchance, but the fancy name of an engine company or an eating-house.
[Illustration: _Montreal from Mount Royal_]
We left Montreal Wednesday, the 2d of October, late in the afternoon.
In the La Prairie cars the Yankees made themselves merry, imitating
the cries of the charette-drivers to perfection, greatly to the
amusement of some French-Canadian travelers, and they kept it up all
the way to Boston. I saw one person on board the boat at St.
Johns,
and one or two more elsewhere in Canada, wearing homespun gray
greatcoats, or capotes, with conical and comical hoods, which fell
back between their shoulders like small bags, ready to be turned up
over the head when occasion required, though a hat usurped that place
now. They looked as if they would be convenient and proper enough as
long as the coats were new and tidy, but would soon come to have a
beggarly and unsightly look, akin to rags and dust-holes. We reached
Burlington early in the morning, where the Yankees tried to pass off
their Canada coppers, but the newsboys knew better. Returning through
the Green Mountains, I was reminded that I had not seen in Canada such
brilliant autumnal tints as I had previously seen in Vermont. Perhaps
there was not yet so great and sudden a contrast with the summer heats
in the former country as in these mountain valleys. As we were passing
through Ashburnham, by a new white house which stood at some distance
in a field, one passenger exclaimed, so that all in the car could hear
him, "There, there's not so good a house as that in all Canada! " I did
not much wonder at his remark, for there is a neatness, as well as
evident prosperity, a certain elastic easiness of circumstances, so to
speak, when not rich, about a New England house, as if the proprietor
could at least afford to make repairs in the spring, which the
Canadian houses do not suggest. Though of stone, they are no better
constructed than a stone barn would be with us; the only building,
except the chateau, on which money and taste are expended, being the
church. In Canada an ordinary New England house would be mistaken for
the chateau, and while every village here contains at least several
gentlemen or "squires," _there_ there is but one to a seigniory.
I got home this Thursday evening, having spent just one week in Canada
and traveled eleven hundred miles. The whole expense of this journey,
including two guide-books and a map, which cost one dollar twelve and
a half cents, was twelve dollars seventy-five cents. I do not suppose
that I have seen all British America; that could not be done by a
cheap excursion, unless it were a cheap excursion to the Icy Sea, as
seen by Hearne or Mackenzie, and then, no doubt, some interesting
features would be omitted. I wished to go a little way behind the word
_Canadense_, of which naturalists make such frequent use; and I should
like still right well to make a longer excursion on foot through the
wilder parts of Canada, which perhaps might be called _Iter
Canadense_.
NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS[3]
Books of natural history make the most cheerful winter reading. I read
in Audubon with a thrill of delight, when the snow covers the ground,
of the magnolia, and the Florida keys, and their warm sea-breezes; of
the fence-rail, and the cotton-tree, and the migrations of the
rice-bird; of the breaking up of winter in Labrador, and the melting
of the snow on the forks of the Missouri; and owe an accession of
health to these reminiscences of luxuriant nature.
Within the circuit of this plodding life,
There enter moments of an azure hue,
Untarnished fair as is the violet
Or anemone, when the spring strews them
By some meandering rivulet, which make
The best philosophy untrue that aims
But to console man for his grievances.
