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A Yankee in Canada
by Henry D. Thoreau
Chapter I. Concord to Montreal
I fear that I have
not got much to say about Canada, not having seen much; what I got by going to Canada was
a cold. I left Concord, Massachusetts, Wednesday morning Sep. 25th 1850, for Quebec. Fare
seven dollars there and back; distance from Boston five hundred and ten miles; being
obliged to leave Montreal on the return as soon as Friday Oct. 4th, or within ten days. I
will not stop to tell the reader the names of my fellow travellers; there were said to be
fifteen hundred of them. I wished only to be set down in Canada, and take one honest walk
there, as I might in Concord woods for an afternoon.
The country was new
to me beyond Fitchburg. In Ashburnham and afterward, as we were whirled rapidly along, I
noticed the woodbine, (Ampelopsis quinquefolia) its leaves now changed, for the
most part on dead trees, draping them like a red scarf. It was not a little exciting,
suggesting bloodshed, or at least a military life, like an epaulet or sash, as if it were
dyed with the blood of the trees whose wounds it was inadequate to staunch. For now the
bloody autumn was come, and an Indian warfare was waged through the forest. These military
trees appeared very numerous, for our rapid progress connected those that were even some
miles apart. Does the woodbine prefer the elm? The first view of Monadnoc was obtained
five or six miles this side of Fitzwilliam, but nearest and best at Troy and beyond. Then
there were the Troy cuts and embankments. Keene street strikes the traveller favorably, it
is so wide, level, straight, and long. I have heard one of my relatives who was born and
bred there say that you could see a chicken run across it a mile off. I have also been
told that when this town was settled they laid out a street four rods wide, but at a
subsequent meeting of the proprietors one rose and remarked, "We have plenty of land,
why not make the street eight rods wide?" and so they voted that it should be eight
rods wide, and the town is known far and near for its handsome street. It was a cheap way
of securing comfort, as well as fame, and I wish that all new towns would take pattern
from this. It is best to lay our plans widely in youth, for then land is cheap, and it is
but too easy to contract our views afterward. Youths so laid out, with broad avenues and
parks, that they may make handsome and liberal old men! Show me a youth whose mind is like
some Washington city of magnificent distances, prepared for the most remotely successful
and glorious life after all, when those spaces shall be built over, and the idea of the
founder be realized. I trust that every New England boy will begin by laying out a Keene
street through his head, eight rods wide. I know one such Washington city of a man, whose
lots as yet are only surveyed and staked out, and, except a cluster of shanties here and
there, only the Capitol stands there for all structures, and any day you may see from afar
his princely idea borne coach-wise along the spacious but yet empty avenues. Keene is
built on a remarkably large and level interval, like the bed of a lake, and the
surrounding hills, which are remote from its street, must afford some good walks. The
scenery of mountain towns is commonly too much crowded. A town which is built on a plain
of some extent, with an open horizon, and surrounded by hills at a distance, affords the
best walks and views.
As we travel
northwest up the country, sugar maples, beeches, birches, hemlocks, spruce, butternuts and
ash trees prevail more and more. To the rapid traveller the number of elms in a town is
the measure of its civility. One man in the cars has a bottle full of some liquor. The
whole company smile whenever it is exhibited. I find no difficulty in containing myself.
The Westmoreland country looked attractive. I heard a passenger giving the very obvious
derivation of this name, West-more-land, as if it were purely American, and he had made a
discovery; but I thought of "my cousin Westmoreland" in England. Every one will
remember the approach to Bellows' Falls, under a high cliff which rises from the
Connecticut. I was disappointed in the size of the river here; it appeared shrunk to a
mere mountain stream. The water was evidently very low. The rivers which we had crossed
this forenoon possessed more of the character of mountain streams than those in the
vicinity of Concord, and I was surprised to see everywhere traces of recent freshets which
had carried away bridges and injured the rail-road, though I had heard nothing of it. In
Ludlow, Mount Holly, and beyond, there is interesting mountain scenery, not rugged and
stupendous, but such as you could easily ramble over, long narrow mountain vales through
which to see the horizon. You are in the midst of the Green Mountains. A few more elevated
blue peaks are seen from the neighborhood of Mount Holly, perhaps Killington Peak is one.
Sometimes, as on the Western rail-road, you are whirled over mountainous embankments, from
which the scared horses in the valleys appear diminished to hounds. All the hills blush. I
think that autumn must be the best season to journey over even the Green Mountains.
You frequently exclaim to yourself, What red maples! The sugar-maple is not so red.
You see some of the latter with rosy spots or cheeks only, blushing on one side like
fruit, while all the rest of the tree is green, proving either some partiality in the
light or frosts, or some prematurity in particular branches. Tall and slender ash trees
whose foliage is turned to a dark mulberry color, are frequent. The butter-nut which is a
remarkably spreading tree, is turned completely yellow, thus proving its relation to the
hickories. I was also struck by the bright yellow tints of the yellow-birch. The
sugar-maple is remarkable for its clean ankle. The groves of these trees looked like vast
forest sheds, their branches stopping short at a uniform height, four or five feet from
the ground, like eaves, as if they had been trimmed by art, so that you could look under
and through the whole grove with its leafy canopy, as under a tent whose curtain is
raised.
As you approach Lake
Champlain you begin to see the New York mountains. The first view of the lake at Vergennes
is impressive, but rather from association than from any peculiarity in the scenery. It
lies there so small (not appearing in that proportion to the width of the state that it
does on the map,) but beautifully quiet, like a picture of the Lake of Lucerne on a music
box, where you trace the name of Lucerne among the foliage; far more ideal than ever it
looked on the map. 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 met with 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 Hiroquois, 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 toward 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,
were 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. Johns, 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
great coat, who looked as if he might be a stage proprietor, certainly a rail-road
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,
red-coats, belonging to the barracks nearby, 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 manœuvred 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 manœuvre as well. The officers spoke sharply to them and appeared to be doing
their part thoroughly. I heard one, suddenly coming to the rear,
exclaim, "Michael Donolly, take his name!" though I could not see what the
latter did or omitted to do. It was whispered that Michael Donolly would have to suffer
for that. I heard some of our party discussing the possibility of their driving these
troops off the field with their umbrellas. I thought that the Yankee, though
undisciplined, had this advantage at least, that he especially is a man who, everywhere
and under all circumstances, is fully resolved to better his condition essentially, and
therefore he could afford to be beaten at first; while the virtue of the Irishman, and to
a great extent the Englishman, consists in merely maintaining his ground, or condition.
The Canadians here, a rather poor looking race clad in grey homespun, which gave them the
appearance of being covered with dust, were riding about in caleches and small one-horse
carts called charrettes. The Yankees assumed that all the riders were racing, or at least
exhibiting the paces of their horses, and saluted them accordingly. We saw but little of
the village here, for nobody could tell us when the cars would start; that was kept a
profound secret, perhaps for political reasons; and therefore we were tied to our seats.
The inhabitants of St. Johns and vicinity are described by an English traveller as
"singularly unprepossessing," and before completing his period he adds,
"besides, they are generally very much disaffected to the British Crown". I
suspect that that "besides" should have been a because.
At length about noon
the cars began to roll toward La Prairie. The whole distance of fifteen miles was over a
remarkably level country, resembling a western prairie, with the mountains about Chambly
visible in the northeast. This novel, but monotonous, scenery was exciting. At La Prairie
we first took notice of the tinned roofs, but, above all, of the St. Lawrence, which
looked like a lake, in fact it is considerably expanded here; it was nine miles across
diagonally to Montreal. Mount Royal in the rear of the city and the island of St. Helens
opposite to it, were now conspicuous. We could also see the Sault St. Louis about five
miles up the river, and the Sault Norman still further eastward. The former are described
as the most considerable rapids in the St. Lawrence; but we could see merely a gleam of
light there as from a cobweb in the sun. Soon the city of Montreal was discovered with its
tin roofs shining afar. Their reflections fell on the eye like a clash of cymbals on the
ear. Above all the church of Notre Dame was conspicuous, and anon the Bonsecours
market-house occupying a commanding position on the quay, in the rear of the shipping.
This city makes the more favorable impression from being approached by water, and also
being built of stone, a gray limestone found on the island. Here, after travelling
directly inland the whole breadth of New England, we had struck upon a city's
harbor,—it made on me the impression of a seaport,—to which ships of six
hundred tons can ascend, and where vessels drawing fifteen feet lie close to the
wharf,—five hundred and forty miles from the Gulf; the St. Lawrence being here two
miles wide. There was a great crowd assembled on the ferry-boat wharf, and on the quay, to
receive the Yankees, and flags of all colors were streaming from the vessels to celebrate
their arrival. When the gun was fired, the gentry hurrahed again and again, and then the
Canadian caleche-drivers, who were most interested in the matter, and who, I perceived,
were separated from the former by a fence, hurrahed their welcome; first the broad-cloth,
then the home-spun.
It was early in the
afternoon when we stepped ashore. With a single companion I soon found my way to the
church of Notre Dame. I saw that it was of great size and signified something. It is said
to be the largest ecclesiastical structure in North America, and can seat ten thousand. It
is two hundred fifty-five and a half feet long, and the groined ceiling is eighty feet
above your head. The Catholic are the only churches which I have seen worth remembering,
which are not almost wholly prophane. I do not speak only of the rich and splendid like
this, but of the humblest of them as well. Coming from the hurrahing mob and the rattling
carriages, we pushed aside the listed door of this church and found ourselves instantly in
an atmosphere which might be sacred to thought and religion if one had any. There sat one
or two women who had stolen a moment from the concerns of the day as they were passing;
but if there had been fifty people there, it would still have been the most solitary place
imaginable. They did not look up at us, nor did one regard another. We walked softly down
the broad-aisle with our hats in our hands. Presently came in a troop of Canadians, in
their homespun, who had come to the city in the boat with us, and one and all kneeled down
in the aisle before the high altar to their devotions, somewhat awkwardly, as cattle
prepare to lie down, and there we left them. As if you were to catch some farmer's sons
from Marlborough, come to cattle-show, silently kneeling in Concord
meeting-house some
Wednesday! Would there not soon be a mob peeping in at the windows? It is true, these
Roman Catholics, priests and all, impress me as a people who have fallen far behind the
significance of their symbols. It is as if an ox had strayed into a church and were trying
to bethink himself. Nevertheless, they are capable of reverence; but we Yankees are a
people in whom this sentiment has nearly died out, and in this respect we cannot bethink
ourselves even as oxen. I did not mind the pictures nor the candles, whether tallow or
tin. Those of the former which I looked at appeared tawdry. It matters little to me
whether the pictures are by a neophyte of the Algonquin or the Italian tribe. But I was
impressed by the quiet religious atmosphere of the place. It was a great cave in the midst
of a city; and what were the altars and the tinsel but the sparkling
stalactites, into which you entered in a moment, and where the still atmosphere and
the sombre light disposed to serious and profitable thought. Such a cave at hand, which
you can enter any day, is worth a thousand of our churches which are open only on
Sundays, hardly long enough for an airing, and then filled with a bustling
congregation,—a church where the priest is the least part, where you do your own
preaching, where the universe preaches to you and can be heard. I am not sure but this
Catholic religion would be an admirable one if the priest were quite omitted. I think that
I might go to church myself sometimes, some Monday, if I lived in a city where there was
such a one to go to. In Concord, to be sure, we do not need such. Our forests are such a
church, far grander and more sacred. We dare not leave our
meeting-houses open for
fear they would be profaned. Such a cave, such a shrine, in one of our groves, for
instance, how long would it be respected? for what purposes would it be entered, by
such baboons as we are? I think of its value not only to religion, but to philosophy and
poetry; beside a reading-room to have a thinking-room in every city! Perchance the time
will come when every house even will have not only its sleeping-rooms, and dining-room,
and talking-room or parlor, but its thinking-room also, and the architects will put it
into their plans. Let it be furnished and ornamented with whatever conduces to serious and
creative thought. I should not object to the holy water, or any other simple symbol, if it
were consecrated by the imagination of the worshippers.
I heard that some
Yankees bet that the candles here were not wax, but tin. A European assured them that they
were wax; but, inquiring of the sexton, he was surprised to learn that they were tin filled
with oil. The church was too poor to afford wax. As for the protestant churches, here, as
elsewhere, they did not interest me, for it is only as caves that churches interest me at
all, and in that respect they were inferior.
Montreal makes the
impression of a larger city than you had expected to find, though you may have heard that
it contains nearly sixty thousand inhabitants. In the newer parts it appeared to be
growing fast like a small New York, and to be considerably Americanized. The names of the
squares reminded you of Paris,—the Champ de Mars, the Place d'Armes, and others,—and
you felt as if a French revolution might break out any moment. Glimpses of Mount Royal
rising behind the town, and the names of some streets in that direction made one think of
Edinburgh. That hill sets off this city wonderfully. I inquired at a principal bookstore
for books published in Montreal. They said that there were none but school books, and the
like, they got their books from the States. From time to time we met a priest in the
streets, for they are distinguished by their dress, like the civil police. Like
clergymen generally, with or without the gown, they made on us the impression of
effeminacy. We also met some Sisters of Charity, dressed in black, with Shaker-shaped
black bonnets and crosses, and cadaverous faces, who looked as if they had almost cried
their eyes out, their complexions parboiled with scalding tears; insulting the
daylight by their presence, having taken an oath not to smile. By cadaverous, I mean that
their faces were like the faces of those who have been dead and buried for a year, and
then untombed, with the life's grief upon them, and yet, for some unaccountable reason,
the process of decay arrested.
"Truth
never fails her servant, sir, nor leaves him
With
the day's shame upon him."
They waited demurely on the side-walk while a truck laden with raisins was driven in at
the seminary of St. Sulpice, never once lifting their eyes from the ground.
The soldier here,
as everywhere in Canada, appeared to be put forward, and by his best foot. They were in
the proportion of the soldiers to the laborers in an African ant-hill. The inhabitants
evidently rely on them in a great measure, for music and entertainment. You would meet
with them pacing back and forth before some guard-house or passage way, guarding,
reguarding, and disregarding all kinds of law by turns, apparently for the sake of the
discipline to themselves, and not because it was important to exclude anybody from
entering that way. They reminded me of the men who are paid for piling up bricks and then
throwing them down again. On every prominent ledge you could see England's hands holding
the Canadas, and I judged by the redness of her knuckles that she would soon have to let
go. In the rear of such a guard- house, in a large gravelled square or parade ground,
called the Champ de Mars, we saw a large body of soldiers being drilled, we being as yet
the only spectators. But they did not appear to notice us any more than the devotees in
the church, but were seemingly as indifferent to fewness of spectators as the phenomena of
nature are, whatever they might have been thinking under their helmets of the Yankees that
were to come. Each man wore white kid gloves. It was one of the most interesting sights
which I saw in Canada. The problem appeared to be, how to smooth down all individual
protuberances or idiosyncrasies, and make a thousand men move as one man, animated by one
central will, and there was some approach to success. They obeyed the signals of a
commander who stood at a great distance, wand in hand, and the precision, and promptness,
and harmony of their movements, could not easily have been matched. The harmony was far
more remarkable than that of any quire or band, and obtained, no doubt, at a greater cost.
They made on me the impression, not of many individuals, but of one vast centipede of a
man, good for all sorts of pulling down;—and why not then for some kinds of building
up? If men could combine thus earnestly, and patiently, and harmoniously, to some really
worthy end, what might they not accomplish? They now put their hands, and partially
perchance their heads, together, and the result is that they are the imperfect tools of an
imperfect and tyrannical government. But if they could put their hands and heads and
hearts and all together, such a cooperation and harmony would be the very end and success
for which government now exists in vain—a government, as it were, not only with
tools, but stock to trade with.
I was obliged to
frame some sentences that sounded like French in order to deal with the market women, who,
for the most part, cannot speak English. According to the guide-book the relative
population of this city stands nearly thus. Two fifths are French Canadian; nearly
one-fifth British Canadian; one and a half fifth English, Irish, and Scotch; somewhat less
than one half fifth Germans, United States people, and others. I saw nothing like pie for
sale, and no good cake to put in my bundle, such as you can easily find in our towns, but
plenty of fair-looking apples, for which Montreal Island is celebrated, and also pears,
cheaper and I thought better than ours, and peaches, which, though they were probably
brought from the south, were as cheap as they commonly are with us. So imperative is the
law of demand and supply that, as I have been told, the market of Montreal is sometimes
supplied with green apples from the state of New York some weeks even before they are ripe
in the latter place. I saw here the spruce wax which the Canadians chew, done up in little
silvered papers, a penny a roll; also a small and shrivelled fruit which they called cerises
mixed with many little stems somewhat like raisins, but I soon returned what I had bought,
finding them rather insipid, only putting a sample in my pocket. Since my return, I find
on comparison that it is the fruit of the sweet viburnum (Viburnum lentago) which
with us rarely holds on till it is ripe.
I stood on the deck
of the steamer John Munn, late in the afternoon, when the second and third ferry-boats
arrived from La Prairie bringing the remainder of the Yankees. I never saw so many
caleches, cabs, charrettes, and similar vehicles, collected before, and doubt if New York
could easily furnish more. The handsome and substantial stone quay which stretches a mile
along the river side and protects the street from the ice, was thronged with the citizens
who had turned out on foot and in carriages to welcome or to behold the Yankees. It was
interesting to see the caleche drivers dash up and down the slopes of the quay with their
active little horses. They drive much faster than in our cities. I have been told that
some of them come nine miles into the city every morning and return every night, without
changing their horses during the day. In the midst of the crowd of carts, I observed one
deep one loaded with sheep with their legs tied together, and their bodies piled one upon
another. As if the driver had forgotten that they were sheep and not yet mutton. A sight,
I trust, peculiar to Canada, though I fear that it is not.
Next chapter: Quebec
and Montmorenci
Return to Henry D. Thoreau: Works: A Yankee in
Canada
Return to Henry D. Thoreau: Works
A
Note on the Text:
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Source:
Excursions and Poems [The Writings of Henry David Thoreau
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906) p. [3]-19.
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