No More Learning

To a traveler from the Old World, Canada East may
appear like a new country, and its inhabitants like colonists, but to
me, coming from New England and being a very green traveler
withal,--notwithstanding what I have said about Hudson's Bay,--it
appeared as old as Normandy itself, and realized much that I had heard
of Europe and the Middle Ages. Even the names of humble Canadian
villages affected me as if they had been those of the renowned cities
of antiquity. To be told by a habitan, when I asked the name of a
village in sight, that it is _St. Fereol_ or _St. Anne_, the _Guardian
Angel_ or the _Holy Joseph's_; or of a mountain, that it was _Belange_
or _St. Hyacinthe_! As soon as you leave the States, these saintly
names begin. _St. Johns_ is the first town you stop at (fortunately we
did not see it), and thenceforward, the names of the mountains, and
streams, and villages reel, if I may so speak, with the intoxication
of poetry,--_Chambly_, _Longueuil_, _Pointe aux Trembles_,
_Bartholomy_, etc. , etc. ; as if it needed only a little foreign
accent, a few more liquids and vowels perchance in the language, to
make us locate our ideals at once. I began to dream of Provence and
the Troubadours, and of places and things which have no existence on
the earth. They veiled the Indian and the primitive forest, and the
woods toward Hudson's Bay were only as the forests of France and
Germany. I could not at once bring myself to believe that the
inhabitants who pronounced daily those beautiful and, to me,
significant names lead as prosaic lives as we of New England. In
short, the Canada which I saw was not merely a place for railroads to
terminate in and for criminals to run to.
When I asked the man to whom I have referred, if there were any falls
on the Riviere au Chien,--for I saw that it came over the same high
bank with the Montmorenci and St. Anne,--he answered that there were.
How far? I inquired. "Trois quatres lieue. " How high? "Je
pense-quatre-vingt-dix pieds;" that is, ninety feet. We turned aside
to look at the falls of the Riviere du Sault a la Puce, half a mile
from the road, which before we had passed in our haste and ignorance,
and we pronounced them as beautiful as any that we saw; yet they
seemed to make no account of them there, and, when first we inquired
the way to the falls, directed us to Montmorenci, seven miles distant.
It was evident that this was the country for waterfalls; that every
stream that empties into the St. Lawrence, for some hundreds of miles,
must have a great fall or cascade on it, and in its passage through
the mountains was, for a short distance, a small Saguenay, with its
upright walls. This fall of La Puce, the least remarkable of the four
which we visited in this vicinity, we had never heard of till we came
to Canada, and yet, so far as I know, there is nothing of the kind in
New England to be compared with it. Most travelers in Canada would not
hear of it, though they might go so near as to hear it. Since my
return I find that in the topographical description of the country
mention is made of "two or three romantic falls" on this stream,
though we saw and heard of but this one. Ask the inhabitants
respecting any stream, if there is a fall on it, and they will
perchance tell you of something as interesting as Bashpish or the
Catskill, which no traveler has ever seen, or if they have not found
it, you may possibly trace up the stream and discover it yourself.
Falls there are a drug, and we became quite dissipated in respect to
them. We had drank too much of them.