The Quebec Music Hall is now fitting up for the Assembly, which will be opened by Lord Elgin on the 13th of this month. Thus the Canadian Government seems to have in its possession some of that Tholosan gold, which Aulus Gellius speaks of as being ill-luck on all who hold it. I have no doubt but that their new sanctuary will be burned down before the year is out. These misfortunes are greedily seized upon by other cities, claimants themselves for the seat of Government. Toronto points scornfully to the charred ruins of the Parliament buildings, and demands that the governmental authority shall be restored to its ancient seat, where a fitting house will await. Quebec says nothing, but fits up its Music Hall, and keeps a firm hold on the Governor General. It is probable, however, that a Federal Union will ere long take place between the two Canadas, and thus afford to each its share of importance.
Quebec is essentially a garrison town. It has no public buildings of any architectural importance, and all its lions are military. Soldiers stroll along the streets, rattan in hand, or walk with servant maids on the ramparts of Sunday evenings. Officers, in undress uniforms, lounge in barrack windows and puff their meerschaums; or else whirl past in a knowing dog-cart and flannel jacket bound for the cricket-ground on the plains of Abraham. Even the civilians of the town have a certain military air about them. There is a smallness in the cap, and ease in the shooting-coat, a studied thickness in the shoe-soles, that all breathe of the English officer...
The great lion of Quebec is of course the Citadel, reputed to be one of the strongest forts in the world. It covers forty acres of ground, and is built upon the highest point of land in the vicinity, called Cape Diamond. It is said to be provisioned for a siege of seven years, while the fortifications, batteries, guns, magazines, &c., are kept in the most perfect working order. The view from that portion of the Citadel that overhangs the river is superb, embracing, as it does, the broad curve of the St. Lawrence, the distant hills of New-Ireland, and the picturesque course of the St. Charles that forms in its path the exquisite Falls of Lorette, which are perfectly Alpine in their beauty.
The Citadel has its anecdotes of course. One rather amusing one about a young American girl struck me as peculiarly characteristic of the Yankee idea of the purchasability of everything. This damsel, after having been shown all over the fort, and astonished by the exhibitions of its huge armory and ammunition store, expressed her conviction to the officer on duty, who was her cicerone, that "the Yankees would have this fortress some day or other."
"Do you think they will be able to take it?" demanded the officer, rather nettled at such a hypothesis.
"Well, I don't know about their taking it," replied the maided, "but I guess you'd sell!"
History does not relate what the officer said in answer to this bold suppostion as to the marketability of the Queen's garrisons.
ANSER CANADIENSIS
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The New York Times, June 13, 1854, p. 2:
CANADA.Quebec and its Vicinity. Correspondence of the New York Daily Times
Quebec, Thursday, June 1, 1854.
The environs of Quebec are well worth more than one visit. Every year in the Summer time, hosts of our countrymen descend upon that devoted city and "do" it. They rush madly from the boat to Sword's Hotel, or Russell's, frantically inscribe their names and whereabouts on the books, and after swallowing a sort of railway breakfast, proceed to "do" the lions.
Never are the peculiarities of the Yankee character more magnificently developed than in the process of seeing Quebec and its vicinity. There are no small number of places worthy of a visit in the neighborhood. There are the Indian village of Lorette, with its picturesque cascade; the waterfall of Montmorenci; ditto, Chaudiere. There are the Plains of Abraham, with Wolfe's monument; the Citadel. The ramparts, to finish with a brief glance at the town itself, and its inhabitants.
Yet all these things our impatient compatriots insist on seeing in the interval between 8 o'clock A.M., when they arrive, and 5 o'clock P.M., when the boat by which they return leaves for Montreal. The hotel keepers are in dismay. It is vain that they explain that all these places are widely separated, and that a day might be profitably spend at any one of them. That by no number of relays of the most rapid cab-horses could this acrobatic sight-seeing be performed.
The Yankees insist. They have dollars they say, and are willing to spend them. Dollars will do almost anything. They cannot see all the sights before 5 o'clock. So away they rush on panting cab-horses to Lorette and Montmorenci, and after having contemplated for both the space of two minutes and a half, they arrive at the hotel just in time to swallow a bowl of scalding soup and catch the steamboat as she is moving. They have seen nothing, thought of nothing but performing what Dickens would call "a rapid act" of sight-seeing. They know nothing whatever of Quebec, except that they have been there, and their idea of Montmorenci Fall is a white table cloth hanging out to dry, with a good deal of noise in the neighborhood.
Now, I am what is generally called "a slow fellow." I take things easy, and do not care about going through life as M. Franconi does through the Hippodrome, when he is performing "The Courier of St. Petersburg." I love to loiter ofer places. To spend whole days in one spot, and dive into its works. I have therefore seen the lions of Quebec, not "done" them.
Imprimis, Lorette. On consulting a diffuse Stranger's Guide, compiled by Mr. Stuart McKay, Editor of the Canada Directory, we obtained the following extensive information about this village:
"It is eight miles distant from the city. The ususal fare for a caleche there and back, is 1½ dollars."
Thus supplied with every necessary knowledge for enjoying a pleasant historical ramble, we set out for Lorette. We will do Mr. Stuart McKay the justice to say that it is eight miles from Quebec, but his statistics regarding the fare are rather under the mark, as the Irish driver eloquently proved to us. In so laborious and magnificent a work, however, as "The Stranger's Guide," trifling errors could scarcely be avoided.
Lorette was once the seat of a powerful tribe of the Huron Indians. A melancholy remnant of the race still haunt the place, having changed their wigwams for stone-built cottages, and their blankets and leggings for prosaic tail-coats and modern unmentionables. The village consists of about thirty or forty houses, all tolerably neatly kept, and swarming with a host of young Indian boys, who earn an honest living by inducing visitors to stick pennies in the earth, and then shooting at them with blunt-headed arrows, the prize being his who knocks the coin from its place. I stuck a quarter into a cleft stick, and the excitement became intense, and several old chieftains made their appearance, and gravely superintended the tremendous contest. A wicked-looking young Huron, with damaged inexpressibles, was the successful competitor, and carried off the silver amid the envious looks of his comrades.
The chief of this decimated tribe lives luxuriously. His house, situated a little way back of the village, is a very pretty villa, kept with the most exquisite neatness. He is quite wealthy, being worth probably six or seven thousand dollars, and carries on a large trade in those embroidered Indian curiousities which the children of the forest may be seen selling in the New-York bar-rooms.
Among the number of squaws, chiefs and young warriors at Lorette, I only saw one or two pure types of Indian breed. These, to say the least of them, were not quite as handsome as a careful perusal of Cooper's novels would have induced one to imagine. I also looked in vain for the bounding step of the Indian maiden. All the Indian maidens I saw had bandy legs and flat noses, and were altogether as unpoetical as it was possible to conceive. By no stretch of the imagination could I convert them into those fawn-eyed heroines that glide so gracefully through the pages of the Last of the Mohicans, The Deerslayer, &c.
From the Indians I turned to the Falls of Lorette. I think I have never seen--and I have had considerable European water-fall experience--a more lovely cascade. Less grand than Montmorenci, or the Chaudiere, it is far more picturesque. Shut in by lofty walls of cliff, tapestried with pines, it chafes and foams and swells with rage, and dashes on through a thousand intricate windings. There is one spot looking up the river from which one sees the romantic mill clinging to the side of the cliff, with the light wooden bridge that crosses the stream in the background, that as a view might worthily take its place in the valley of the Grindenwald, and by the side of the Staubbach. All along, for a mile or so, the river retains its beauty. It rushes through a narrow chasm with precipitous sides that close in a green perspective as they recede, and seem to leave the stream no outlet. One might easily conjure up an Indian romance here, if one had not seen Lorette, and heard the descendants of the Hurons squabbling about half-pence.
Montmorenci is perhaps the grandest of all the waterfalls that foam around Quebec. Its height is 240 feet, and when it is seen, as I saw it, swollen with the snow that was melting on the hills, the effect is truly sublime. The drive from Quebec to Montmorenci is exceedingly pretty, and affords several charming views of the city by the way. About a mile above the Falls are some curious formations of trap, called the natural steps. These have evidently been formed by the action of water, and present the appearance of a vast staircase of Titanic proportions. An ancient Greek, if he saw it, would have instantly added a page to the mythology, telling how Prometheus and his rebellious friends had once lived there, and from that spot meditated their assault upon Heaven--the steps being hollowed out in order to make their ascent to the celestial regions all the more easy...
If the statistical works published in Lower Canada be correct, both Provinces are increasing in commercial and agricultural prosperity. The growth of wheat in the United States has increased within the last ten years at the rate of 48 per cent., while in the two Canadas it has increased during the same period at the rate of over four hundred per cent. Indian corn is perhaps the article by which the fairest estimate may be drawn between the United States and Canada. Taking that as a basis, we find that the increase in the United States between 1840 and 1850 has been equal to 56 per cent., while the increase in Canada for the same article for the last nine years has been 163 per cent. The comparative increase in oats had been similarly extensive.
Ohio, in 1850, produced 14,487,351 bushels of wheat, while Canada, with a much smaller number of acres under cultivation, produced the same year 16,156,946 bushels. The average produce per acre in Ohio is 12, and in Canada, 14 1-5 bushels. Ohio produces a little over 1-7 part of the wheat raised in all the United States, and Canada a little less than 1-6 part of that amount.
The export and import statements present an equally flourishing appearance, and according to the Government returns, the revenue for the year ending January 1, 1854, leaves a surplus of $2,500,000.
The idea of annexation appears to meet with little favor in lower Canada. The English and Irish population seem to cling to their old institutions, and the habitans or native French are far too slow in intellect to grasp at a new idea. They stick to their old customs and ways of thought with singular tenacity. Even in their agriculture they do not seem to profit by any of the modern improvements. The old plow, the old barrow, and the old spade are still used by most of the habitant farmers. They till their land, however, with considerable neatness, and their houses are scupulously clean. These habitans are a very charming race of people. Not in the slightest degree intelligent or educated, they possess the simpliciy and frankness of a pure and patriarchal tribe. They are honest, cleanly, and moral; slowly and rarely gathering new ideas, but leading comfortable, pure, and unprogressive lives. By appearance they are rather ordinary and ill-made, but their manners are exquisitely frank and unpretendingly courteous.
The present Governor General of Canada is not very popular with the English subjects. He bestows all the Government patronage he can on the French Canadians, to the exclusion of his own countrymen. He seems to think they have a better right to the emolumentary offices of the country than the British, who very naturally do not admire this Brutus-like justice. A great change for the better has, however, been effected in the Government system, since what were called "the good old times," when the English enjoyed a monopoly of all the good places, and one gentleman might be found holding twelve or fourteen official appointments in his own person.
From the brief glimpse I had at Lower Canada, I know no place where a person might more agreeably spend a month. The native population are fresh and interesting, the society at Quebec delightful; and to the sportsman, the fishing in Summer, and the bear-hunting in the Fall, are no ordinary attractions.
ANSER CANADIENSIS
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