No More Learning

You look out from the ramparts of the citadel beyond the frontiers of
civilization. Yonder small group of hills, according to the
guide-book, forms "the portal of the wilds which are trodden only by
the feet of the Indian hunters as far as Hudson's Bay. " It is but a
few years since Bouchette declared that the country ten leagues north
of the British capital of North America was as little known as the
middle of Africa. Thus the citadel under my feet, and all historical
associations, were swept away again by an influence from the wilds and
from Nature, as if the beholder had read her history,--an influence
which, like the Great River itself, flowed from the Arctic fastnesses
and Western forests with irresistible tide over all.

The most interesting object in Canada to me was the River St.
Lawrence, known far and wide, and for centuries, as the Great River.
Cartier, its discoverer, sailed up it as far as Montreal in
1535,--nearly a century before the coming of the Pilgrims; and I have
seen a pretty accurate map of it so far, containing the city of
"Hochelaga" and the river "Saguenay," in Ortelius's _Theatrum Orbis
Terrarum_, printed at Antwerp in 1575,--the first edition having
appeared in 1570,--in which the famous cities of "Norumbega" and
"Orsinora" stand on the rough-blocked continent where New England is
to-day, and the fabulous but unfortunate Isle of Demons, and Frislant,
and others, lie off and on in the unfrequented sea, some of them
prowling near what is now the course of the Cunard steamers. In this
ponderous folio of the "Ptolemy of his age," said to be the first
general atlas published after the revival of the sciences in Europe,
only one page of which is devoted to the topography of the _Novus
Orbis_, the St. Lawrence is the only large river, whether drawn from
fancy or from observation, on the east side of North America. It was
famous in Europe before the other rivers of North America were heard
of, notwithstanding that the mouth of the Mississippi is said to have
been discovered first, and its stream was reached by Soto not long
after; but the St. Lawrence had attracted settlers to its cold shores
long before the Mississippi, or even the Hudson, was known to the
world. Schoolcraft was misled by Gallatin into saying that Narvaez
discovered the Mississippi. De Vega does _not_ say so. The first
explorers declared that the summer in that country was as warm as
France, and they named one of the bays in the Gulf of St. Lawrence the
Bay of Chaleur, or of warmth; but they said nothing about the winter
being as cold as Greenland.
In the manuscript account of Cartier's
second voyage, attributed by some to that navigator himself, it is
called "the greatest river, without comparison, that is known to have
ever been seen. " The savages told him that it was the "chemin du
Canada,"--the highway to Canada,--"which goes so far that no man had
ever been to the end that they had heard. " The Saguenay, one of its
tributaries, which the panorama has made known to New England within
three years, is described by Cartier, in 1535, and still more
particularly by Jean Alphonse, in 1542, who adds, "I think that this
river comes from the sea of Cathay, for in this place there issues a
strong current, and there runs there a terrible tide. " The early
explorers saw many whales and other sea-monsters far up the St.
Lawrence. Champlain, in his map, represents a whale spouting in the
harbor of Quebec, three hundred and sixty miles from what is called
the mouth of the river; and Charlevoix takes his reader to the summit
of Cape Diamond to see the "porpoises, white as snow," sporting on the
surface of the harbor of Quebec. And Boucher says in 1664, "from there
[Tadoussac] to Montreal is found a great quantity of _Marsouins
blancs_. " Several whales have been taken pretty high up the river
since I was there. P. A. Gosse, in his "Canadian Naturalist," p. 171
(London, 1840), speaks of "the white dolphin of the St. Lawrence
(_Delphinus Canadensis_)," as considered different from those of the
sea. "The Natural History Society of Montreal offered a prize, a few
years ago, for an essay on the _Cetacea_ of the St. Lawrence, which
was, I believe, handed in. " In Champlain's day it was commonly called
"the Great River of Canada.