No More Learning

It does not say, "Here I am, Lake Champlain," as the
conductor might for it, but having studied the geography thirty years,
you crossed over a hill one afternoon and beheld it. But it is only a
glimpse that you get here. At Burlington you rush to a wharf and go on
board a steamboat, two hundred and thirty-two miles from Boston. We
left Concord at twenty minutes before eight in the morning, and were
in Burlington about six at night, but too late to see the lake. We got
our first fair view of the lake at dawn, just before reaching
Plattsburg, and saw blue ranges of mountains on either hand, in New
York and in Vermont, the former especially grand. A few white
schooners, like gulls, were seen in the distance, for it is not waste
and solitary like a lake in Tartary; but it was such a view as leaves
not much to be said; indeed, I have postponed Lake Champlain to
another day.

The oldest reference to these waters that I have yet seen is in the
account of Cartier's discovery and exploration of the St. Lawrence in
1535. Samuel Champlain actually discovered and paddled up the lake in
July, 1609, eleven years before the settlement of Plymouth,
accompanying a war-party of the Canadian Indians against the
Iroquois. He describes the islands in it as not inhabited, although
they are pleasant,--on account of the continual wars of the Indians,
in consequence of which they withdraw from the rivers and lakes into
the depths of the land, that they may not be surprised. "Continuing
our course," says he, "in this lake, on the western side, viewing the
country, I saw on the eastern side very high mountains, where there
was snow on the summit. I inquired of the savages if those places were
inhabited. They replied that they were, and that they were Iroquois,
and that in those places there were beautiful valleys and plains
fertile in corn, such as I have eaten in this country, with an
infinity of other fruits. " This is the earliest account of what is now
Vermont.

The number of French-Canadian gentlemen and ladies among the
passengers, and the sound of the French language, advertised us by
this time that we were being whirled towards some foreign vortex.
And
now we have left Rouse's Point, and entered the Sorel River, and
passed the invisible barrier between the States and Canada. The shores
of the Sorel, Richelieu, or St. John's River are flat and reedy, where
I had expected something more rough and mountainous for a natural
boundary between two nations. Yet I saw a difference at once, in the
few huts, in the pirogues on the shore, and as it were, in the shore
itself. This was an interesting scenery to me, and the very reeds or
rushes in the shallow water and the tree-tops in the swamps have left
a pleasing impression. We had still a distant view behind us of two or
three blue mountains in Vermont and New York. About nine o'clock in
the forenoon we reached St. John's, an old frontier post three hundred
and six miles from Boston, and twenty-four from Montreal. We now
discovered that we were in a foreign country, in a station-house of
another nation. This building was a barn-like structure, looking as if
it were the work of the villagers combined, like a log house in a new
settlement. My attention was caught by the double advertisements in
French and English fastened to its posts, by the formality of the
English, and the covert or open reference to their queen and the
British lion. No gentlemanly conductor appeared, none whom you would
know to be the conductor by his dress and demeanor; but ere long we
began to see here and there a solid, red-faced, burly-looking
Englishman, a little pursy perhaps, who made us ashamed of ourselves
and our thin and nervous countrymen,--a grandfatherly personage, at
home in his greatcoat, who looked as if he might be a stage
proprietor, certainly a railroad director, and knew, or had a right to
know, when the cars did start. Then there were two or three
pale-faced, black-eyed, loquacious Canadian-French gentlemen there,
shrugging their shoulders; pitted as if they had all had the
small-pox. In the meanwhile some soldiers, redcoats, belonging to the
barracks near by, were turned out to be drilled. At every important
point in our route the soldiers showed themselves ready for us; though
they were evidently rather raw recruits here, they manoeuvred far
better than our soldiers; yet, as usual, I heard some Yankees talk as
if they were no great shakes, and they had seen the Acton Blues
manoeuvre as well. The officers spoke sharply to them, and appeared
to be doing their part thoroughly.