No More Learning

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. Beside these which I have
referred to, there are a thousand other falls on the St. Lawrence and
its tributaries which I have not seen nor heard of; and above all
there is one which I have heard of, called Niagara, so that I think
that this river must be the most remarkable for its falls of any in
the world.

At a house near the western boundary of Chateau Richer, whose master
was said to speak a very little English, having recently lived at
Quebec, we got lodging for the night. As usual, we had to go down a
lane to get round to the south side of the house, where the door was,
away from the road. For these Canadian houses have no front door,
properly speaking. Every part is for the use of the occupant
exclusively, and no part has reference to the traveler or to travel.
Every New England house, on the contrary, has a front and principal
door opening to the great world, though it may be on the cold side,
for it stands on the highway of nations, and the road which runs by it
comes from the Old World and goes to the far West; but the Canadian's
door opens into his backyard and farm alone, and the road which runs
behind his house leads only from the church of one saint to that of
another. We found a large family, hired men, wife, and children, just
eating their supper. They prepared some for us afterwards. The hired
men were a merry crew of short, black-eyed fellows, and the wife a
thin-faced, sharp-featured French-Canadian woman. Our host's English
staggered us rather more than any French we had heard yet; indeed, we
found that even we spoke better French than he did English, and we
concluded that a less crime would be committed on the whole if we
spoke French with him, and in no respect aided or abetted his attempts
to speak English.
We had a long and merry chat with the family this
Sunday evening in their spacious kitchen. While my companion smoked a
pipe and parlez-vous'd with one party, I parleyed and gesticulated to
another. The whole family was enlisted, and I kept a little girl
writing what was otherwise unintelligible. The geography getting
obscure, we called for chalk, and the greasy oiled table-cloth having
been wiped,--for it needed no French, but only a sentence from the
universal language of looks on my part, to indicate that it needed
it,--we drew the St. Lawrence, with its parishes, thereon, and
thenceforward went on swimmingly, by turns handling the chalk and
committing to the table-cloth what would otherwise have been left in a
limbo of unintelligibility. This was greatly to the entertainment of
all parties. I was amused to hear how much use they made of the word
oui in conversation with one another. After repeated single insertions
of it, one would suddenly throw back his head at the same time with
his chair, and exclaim rapidly, "Oui! oui! oui! oui! " like a Yankee
driving pigs. Our host told us that the farms thereabouts were
generally two acres or three hundred and sixty French feet wide, by
one and a half leagues (? ), or a little more than four and a half of
our miles deep. This use of the word _acre_ as long measure arises
from the fact that the French acre or arpent, the arpent of Paris,
makes a square of ten perches, of eighteen feet each, on a side, a
Paris foot being equal to 1. 06575 English feet.