Providence, which has not endowed the negro with intellectual powers of the highest order, has given him an amount of heart and enthusiasm to which we are strangers. He is warm and ardent in his attachments, fierce in his resentfulness, terrible in his revenge. The black troops of our West Indian colonies, when let loose, fight with more fury and bloodthirstiness than those of any white race. This temperament is carried into religion, and nowhere on earth does our Lord find a more loving and zealous disciple than in the converted and Christianized negro. It is indeed true that, in America only, more than three million free-born Africans wear the chains of servitude; but it is no less true that in many instances the Gospel has penetrated the shades of their Egyptian darkness, giving them

"A clear escape from tyrannizing lust, A full immunity from penal woe,"

Many persons who have crossed the Atlantic without annoyance are discomposed by the short chopping surges of these inland seas, and the poor negresses suffered dreadfully from sea-sickness.

As the stewardess was upstairs, and too ill herself to attend upon any one, I did what I could for them, getting them pillows, camphor, &c., only too happy that I was in a condition to be useful. One of them, a young married woman with a baby of three months old, was alarmingly ill, and, as the poor infant was in danger of being seriously injured by the rolling of the ship, I took it on my lap for an hour till the gale moderated, thereby gaining the lasting kindly remembrance of its poor mother. I am sure that a white infant would have screamed in a most appalling way, for, as I had never taken a baby in my arms before, I held it in a very awkward manner; but the poor little black thing, wearied with its struggles on the floor, lay very passively, every now and then turning its little monkey-face up to mine, with a look of understanding and confidence which quite conciliated my good will. It was so awfully ugly, so much like a black ape, and so little like the young of the human species, that I was obliged while I held it to avert my eyes from it, lest in a sudden fit of foolish prejudice and disgust I should let it fall. Meanwhile, the Southern lady was very ill, but not too ill, I am sorry to say, to box the ears of her slaves.

The gale moderated about nine in the morning, leaving a very rough, foamy sea, which reflected in a peculiarly dazzling and disagreeable way the cloudless and piercing blue of the sky. The saloon looked as magnificent as by candle-light, with the sunshine streaming through a running window of stained glass.

Dinner on a plentiful scale was served at one, but out of 300 passengers only about 30 were able to avail themselves of it. Large glass tubs of vanilla cream-ice were served. The voyage was peculiarly uninteresting, as we were out of sight of land nearly the whole day; my friend the widow did not appear, and, when I attempted to write, the inkstand rolled off the table. It was just sunset, when we reached Buffalo, and moored at a wharf crowded with large steamers receiving and discharging cargo. Owing to the gale, we were two hours too late for the Niagara cars, and I slept at the Western Hotel, where I received every attention.

Buffalo is one of the best samples of American progress. It is a regularly laid out and substantially built city of 65,000 inhabitants. It is still in the vigour of youth, for the present town only dates from 1813. It stands at the foot of Lake Erie, at the opening of the Hudson canal, where the commerce of the great chain of inland lakes is condensed. It is very "going ahead;" its inhabitants are ever changing; its population is composed of all nations, with a very large proportion of Germans, French, and Irish. But their national characteristics, though not lost, are seen through a medium of pure Americanism. They all rush about—the lethargic German keeps pace with the energetic Yankee; and the Irishman, no longer in rags, "guesses" and "spekilates" in the brogue of Erin. Western travellers pass through Buffalo; tourists bound for Canada pass through Buffalo; the traffic of lakes, canals, and several lines of rail centres at Buffalo; so engines scream, and steamers puff, all day long. It has a great shipbuilding trade, and to all appearance is one of the most progressive and go-ahead cities in the Union.

I left Buffalo on a clear, frosty morning, by a line which ran between lumber-yards [Footnote: Lumber is sawn timber.] on a prodigious scale and the hard white beach of Lake Erie. Soon after leaving the city, the lake becomes narrow and rapid, and finally hurries along with fearful velocity. I knew that I was looking at the commencement of the rapids of Niagara, but the cars ran into some clearings, and presently stopped at a very bustling station, where a very officious man shouted, "Niagara Falls Station!" The name grated unpleasantly upon my ears. A man appeared at the door of the car in which I was the only passenger—"You for Lewiston, quick, this way!" and hurried me into a stage of uncouth construction, drawn by four horses. We jolted along the very worst road I ever travelled on—corduroy was Elysium to it. No level was observed; it seemed to be a mere track along waste land, running through holes, over hillocks and stumps of trees. We were one hour and three-quarters in going a short seven miles. If I had been better acquainted with the neighbourhood, I might, as I only found out when it was too late, have crossed the bridge at Niagara Falls, spent three hours in sight of Niagara, proceeding to Queenston in time for the steamer by the Canada cars!

On our way to Lewiston we met forty of these four-horse stages. I caught a distant view of the falls, and a nearer one of the yet incomplete suspension bridge, which, when finished, will be one of the greatest triumphs of engineering art.

Beyond this the scenery is very beautiful. The road runs among forest trees of luxuriant growth, and peach and apple orchards, upon the American bank of the Niagara river. This bank is a cliff 300 feet high, and from the edge of the road you may throw a stone into the boiling torrent below; yet the only parapet is a rotten fence, in many places completely destroyed. When you begin to descend the steep hill to Lewiston the drive is absolutely frightful. The cumbrous vehicle creaks, jolts, and swings, and, in spite of friction-breaks and other appliances, gradually acquires an impetus which sends it at full speed down the tremendous hill, and round the sharp corner, to the hotel at Lewiston. While I was waiting there watching the stages, and buying peaches, of which I got six for a penny, a stage came at full speed down the hill, with only two men on the driving-seat. The back straps had evidently given way, and the whole machine had a tendency to jump forward, when, in coming down the steepest part of the declivity, it got a jolt, and in the most ridiculous way turned "topsy-turvy," the roof coming down upon the horses' backs. The men were thrown off unhurt, but the poor animals were very much cut and bruised.

I crossed Lake Ontario to Toronto in the Peerless, a very smart, safe, iron steamer, with the saloon and chief weight below. The fittings of this beautiful little vessel are in perfect taste. We stopped for two hours at the wharf at Niagara, a town on the British side, protected once by a now disused and dismantled fort. The cars at length came up, two hours after their time, and the excuse given for the delay was, that they had run over a cow!

In grim contrast to the dismantled English Fort Massassaqua, Fort Niagara stands on the American side, and is a place of considerable strength. There I saw sentinels in grey uniforms, and the flag of the stars and stripes.

Captain D—— of the Peerless brought his beautiful little vessel from the Clyde in 6000 pieces, and is justly proud of her. I sat next him at dinner, and found that we knew some of the same people in Scotland. Gaelic was a further introduction; and though so many thousand miles away, for a moment I felt myself at home when we spoke of the majestic Cuchullins and the heathery braes of Balquidder. In the Peerless every one took wine or liqueurs. There was no bill of fare, but a long list of wines and spirits was placed by each plate. Instead of being disturbed in the middle of dinner by a poke on the shoulder, and the demand, "Dinner ticket, or fifty cents," I was allowed to remain as long as I pleased, and at the conclusion of the voyage a gentlemanly Highland purser asked me for my passage and dinner money together.

We passed a number of brigs and schooners under full sail, their canvass remarkable for its whiteness; their hulls also were snowy white. They looked as though "they were drifting with the dead, to shores where all was dumb."

Late in the evening we entered the harbour of Toronto, which is a very capacious one, and is protected by a natural mole of sand some miles in extent. Though this breakwater has some houses and a few trees, it is the picture of dreary desolation.

The city of Toronto, the stronghold of Canadian learning and loyalty, presents an imposing appearance, as seen from the water. It stands on ground sloping upwards from the lake, and manufactories, colleges, asylums, church spires, and public buildings, the whole faced by a handsome line of quays, present themselves at once to the eye.

A soft and familiar sound came off from the shore; it was the well-known note of the British bugle, and the flag whose silken folds were rising and falling on the breeze was the meteor flag of England. Long may it brave "the battle and the breeze"! English uniforms were glancing among the crowd on the quay, English faces surrounded me, English voices rang in my ears; the nglig costumes which met my eyes were in the best style of England. A thrill of pleasure went through my heart on finding, more than 4000 miles from home, the characteristics of my own loved land.

But I must add that there were unpleasant characteristics peculiarly English also. I could never have landed, the confusion was so great, had not Captain D—— assisted me. One porter ran off with one trunk, another with another, while three were fighting for the possession of my valise, till silenced by the cane of a custom-house officer. Then there was a clamorous demand for "wharfage," and the hackman charged half a dollar for taking me a quarter of a mile. All this somewhat damped my ecstacies, and contrasted unfavourably with the orderly and easy way in which I landed on the shore of the United States.

At Russell's Hotel I rejoined Mr. and Mrs. Walrence, who said "they would have been extremely surprised if a lady in their country had met with the slightest difficulty or annoyance" in travelling alone for 700 miles!

My ecstacies were still further toned down when I woke the next morning with my neck, hands, and face stinging and swollen from the bites of innumerable mosquitoes.



CHAPTER X.

The Place of Council—Its progress and its people—English hearts— "Sebastopol is taken"—Squibs and crackers—A ship on her beam-ends— Selfishness—A mongrel city—A Scot—Constancy rewarded—Monetary difficulties—Detention on a bridge—A Canadian homestead—Life in the clearings—The bush on fire—A word on farming—The "bee" and its produce —Eccentricities of Mr. Haldimands—A ride on a troop-horse—Scotch patriotism—An English church—The servant nuisance—Richard Cobden.

The people of Toronto informed me, immediately on my arrival in their city, that "Toronto is the most English place to be met with out of England." At first I was at a loss to understand their meaning. Wooden houses, long streets crossing each other at right angles, and wooden side- walks, looked very un-English to my eye. But when I had been for a few days at Toronto, and had become accustomed to the necessarily-unfinished appearance of a town which has only enjoyed sixty years of existence, I fully agreed with the laudatory remarks passed upon it. The wooden houses have altogether disappeared from the principal streets, and have been replaced by substantial erections of brick and stone. The churches are numerous, and of tasteful architecture. The public edifices are well situated and very handsome. King Street, the principal thoroughfare, is two miles in length, and the side-walks are lined with handsome shops. The outskirts of Toronto abound in villa residences, standing in gardens or shrubberies. The people do not run "hurry skurry" along the streets, but there are no idlers to be observed. Hirsute eccentricities have also disappeared; the beard is rarely seen, and the moustache is not considered a necessary ornament. The faded careworn look of the American ladies has given place to the bright complexion, the dimpled smile, and the active elastic tread, so peculiarly English. Indeed, in walking along the streets, there is nothing to tell that one is not in England; and if anything were needed to complete the illusion, those sure tokens of British civilisation, a jail and a lunatic asylum, are not wanting.

Toronto possesses in a remarkable degree the appearances of stability and progress. No town on the Western Continent has progressed more rapidly; certainly none more surely. I conversed with an old gentleman who remembered its site when it was covered with a forest, when the smoke of Indian wigwams ascended through the trees, and when wild fowl crowded the waters of the harbour. The place then bore the name of Toronto—the Place of Council. The name was changed by the first settlers to Little York, but in 1814 its euphonious name of Toronto was again bestowed upon it. Its population in 1801 was 336; it is now nearly 50,000.

Toronto is not the fungus growth, staring and wooden, of a temporary necessity; it is the result of persevering industry, well-applied capital, and healthy and progressive commercial prosperity. Various railroads are in course of construction, which will make it the exporting market for the increasing produce of the interior; and as the migratory Canadian Legislature is now stationary at Toronto for four years, its future progress will probably be more rapid than its past. Its wharfs are always crowded with freight and passenger steamers, by which it communicates two or three times a day with the great cities of the United States, and Quebec and Montreal. It is the seat of Canadian learning, and, besides excellent schools, possesses a university, and several theological and general seminaries. The society is said to be highly superior. I give willing testimony in favour of this assertion, from the little which I saw of it, but an attack of ague prevented me from presenting my letters of introduction. It is a very musical place, and at Toronto Jenny Lind gave the only concerts with which she honoured Canada. A large number of the inhabitants are Scotch, which may account for the admirable way in which the Sabbath is observed.

If I was pleased to find that the streets, the stores, the accent, the manners were English, I was rejoiced to see that from the highest to the lowest the hearts of the people were English also. I was at Toronto when the false despatch was received announcing the capture of Sebastopol and of the Russian army. I was spending the evening at the house of a friend, when a gentleman ran in to say that the church bells were ringing for a great victory! It was but the work of a few minutes for us to jump into a hack, and drive at full speed to the office of the Globe newspaper, where the report was apparently confirmed. A great crowd in a state of eager excitement besieged the doors, and presently a man mounted on a lamp-post read the words, "Sebastopol is taken! The Russian fleet burnt! Eighteen thousand killed and wounded. Loss of the Allies, two thousand five hundred." This news had been telegraphed from Boston, and surely the trembling tongue of steel had never before told such a bloody tale. One shout of "Hurrah for Old England" burst from the crowd, and hearty English cheers were given, which were caught up and repeated down the crowded streets of Toronto. The shout thrilled through my heart; it told that the flag of England waved over the loyal, true-hearted, and brave; it told of attachment to the constitution and the throne; it told that in our times of difficulty and danger "St. George and merry England" would prove a gathering cry even on the prosperous shores of Lake Ontario. Greater enthusiasm could not have been exhibited on the receipt of this false but glorious news in any city at home. The bells, which a few days before had tolled for the catastrophe of the Arctic, now pealed forth in triumph for the victory of the Alma. Toronto knew no rest on that night. Those who rejoiced over a victory gained over the northern despot were those who had successfully resisted the despotism of a band of rebels. The streets were almost impassable from the crowds who thronged them. Hand-rockets exploded almost into people's eyes—serpents and squibs were hissing and cracking over the pavements—and people were rushing in all directions for fuel for the different bonfires. The largest of these was opposite the St. Lawrence Hall. It was a monster one of tar-barrels, and lighted up the whole street, paling the sickly flame of the gas-lamps. There was a large and accumulating crowd round it, shouting, "Hurrah for Old England! Down with the Rooshians! Three cheers for the Queen!" and the like. Sky-rockets were blazing high in air, men were rushing about firing muskets, the small swivels of the steamers at the wharfs were firing incessantly, and carts with combustibles were going at full speed along the streets, each fresh arrival being hailed with enthusiastic cheering. There were firemen, too, in their picturesque dresses, who had turned out at the first sound of the bells, and their services were soon put in requisition, for enthusiasm produced recklessness, and two or three shingle-roofs were set on fire by the descent of rockets upon them. This display of attachment to England was not confined to the loyal and aristocratic city of Toronto; at Hamilton, a thriving commercial place, of suspected American tendencies, the town-council was assembled at the time the despatch was received, and instantly voted a sum for an illumination.

From my praise of Toronto I must except the hotels, which are of a very inferior class. They are a poor imitation of those in the States. Russell's Hotel, at which I stayed for eight days, was a disagreeable contrast to the National Hotel at Detroit, and another of some pretensions, the North American, was said to be even more comfortless. The bedrooms at Russell's swarmed with mosquitoes; and the waiters, who were runaway slaves, were inattentive and uncivil.

After staying some little time with my friends at Toronto, I went to pay a visit to some friends at Hamilton. The afternoon was very windy and stormy. The lake looked very unpromising from the wharf; the island protected the harbour, but beyond this the waves were breaking with fury. Several persons who came down, intending to take their passage for Hamilton, were deterred by the threatening aspect of the weather, but, not having heard anything against the character of Lake Ontario, I had sufficient confidence in it to persevere in my intention. I said to the captain, "I suppose it won't be rough?" to which he replied that he could not flatter me by saying so, adding that he had never seen so many persons sick as in the morning. Dinner was served immediately on our leaving the harbour, but the number of those who sat down, at first about thirty, soon diminished to five, the others having rushed in a most mysterious manner to state rooms or windows. For my own part, I cannot say that the allowed excellence of the cuisine tempted me to make a very substantial meal, and I was glad of an excuse for retiring to a state-room, which I shared with a lady who had just taken leave of her three children. This cabin was very prettily arranged, but the movements of things were rather erratic, and my valise gave most disagreeable manifestations of spiritual agency.

The ship was making little way, and rolling and pitching fearfully, and, knowing how very top-heavy she was, I did not at all like the glimpses of raging water which I with difficulty obtained through the cabin windows. To understand what followed it will be necessary for the reader to recollect that the saloon and state-rooms in this vessel formed an erection or deck-house about eight feet high upon the deck, and that the part of the saloon where most of the passengers were congregated, as well as the state-room where I was sitting, were within a few feet of the bow of the ship, and consequently exposed to the fury of the waves. I had sat in my state-room for half an hour, feeling very apathetic, and wishing myself anywhere but where I was, when something struck the ship, and the wretched fabric fell over on her side. Another and another—then silence for a second, broken only by the crash and roar of winds and waters. The inner door burst open, letting in an inundation of water. My companion jumped up, shrieking, "Oh, my children! we're lost—we're lost!" and crawled, pale and trembling, into the saloon. The vessel was lying on her side, therefore locomotion was most difficult; but sea-sick people were emerging from their state-rooms, shrieking, some that they were lost— others for their children—others for mercy; while a group of gentlemen, less noisy, but not less frightened, and drenched to the skin, were standing together, with pale and ashy faces. "What is the matter?" inquired my companion, taking hold of one of these men. "Say your prayers, for we are going down," was the brutal reply. For the first and only time during my American travels I was really petrified with fear. Suddenly a wave struck the hapless vessel, and with a stunning crash broke through the thin woodwork of the side of the saloon. I caught hold of a life-buoy which was near me—a gentleman clutched it from me, for fright makes some men selfish—and, breathless, I was thrown down into the gurgling water. I learned then how quickly thoughts can pass through the mind, for in those few seconds I thought less of the anticipated death-struggle amid the boiling surges of the lake, and of the quiet sleep beneath its gloomy waters, than of the unsatisfactory manner in which those at home would glean the terrible tidings from the accident columns of a newspaper. Another minute, and I was swept through the open door into a state-room— another one of suspense, and the ship righted as if by a superhuman effort. There seemed a respite—there was a silence, broken only by the roar of winds and waves, and with the respite came hope. Shortly after, the master of the ship appeared, with his hat off, and completely drenched. "Thank God, we're safe!" he said, and returned to his duty. We had all supposed that we had struck on a rock or wreck. I never knew the precise nature of our danger beyond this, that the vessel had been thrown on her beam-ends in a squall, and that, the wind immediately veering round, the fury of the waves had been spent upon her.

Many of the passengers now wished the captain to return, but he said that he should incur greater danger in an attempt to make the harbour of Toronto than by proceeding down the open lake. For some time nothing was to be seen but a dense fog, a storm of sleet which quite darkened the air, and raging waves, on which we mounted sometimes, while at others we were buried between them. In another hour the gale had completely subsided, and, after we had changed our drenched habiliments, no token remained of the previous storm but the drowned and dismantled appearance of the saloon, and the resolution on my own mind never to trust myself again on one of these fearful lakes. I was amused to observe that those people who had displayed the greatest symptoms of fear during the storm were the first to protest that, "as for them, they never thought there was any danger." The afternoon, though cold, was extremely beautiful, but, owing to the storm in the early part of our voyage, we did not reach Hamilton till nightfall, or three hours after our appointed time.

I do not like these inland lakes, or tideless fresh-water seas, as they may more appropriately be termed. I know Lake Ontario well; I have crossed it twice, and have been up and down it five times. I have sojourned upon its shores, and have seen them under the hot light of an autumn sun, and underneath a mantle of wintry snow; but there is to me something peculiarly oppressive about this vast expanse of water. If the lake is rough, there are no harbours of refuge in which to take shelter—if calm, the waters, though blue, pure, and clear, look monotonous and dead. The very ships look lonely things; their hulls and sails are white, and some of them have been known in time of cholera to drift over the lake from day to day, with none to guide the helm. The shores, too, are flat and uninteresting; my eyes wearied of following that interminable boundary of trees stretching away to the distant horizon.

Yet Lake Ontario affords great advantages to both Canada and the United States. The former has the large towns of Hamilton, Toronto, and Kingston on its shores, with the exporting places of Oakville, Credit, and Cobourg. The important towns of Oswego and Rochester, with smaller ones too numerous to name, are on the American side. This lake is five hundred miles round, and, owing to its very great depth, never freezes, except just along the shores. An immense trade is carried on upon it, both in steamers and sailing vessels. A ship-canal connects Lake Ontario with Lake Erie, thereby overcoming the obstacle to navigation produced by the Falls of Niagara. This stupendous work is called the Welland Canal.

At Hamilton I received a most cordial welcome from the friends whom I went to visit, and saw something of the surrounding country. It is, I think, the most bustling place in Canada. It is a very juvenile city, yet already has a population of twenty-five thousand people. The stores and hotels are handsome, and the streets are brilliantly lighted with gas. Hamilton has a peculiarly unfinished appearance. Indications of progress meet one on every side—there are houses being built, and houses being pulled down to make room for larger and more substantial ones—streets are being extended, and new ones are being staked out, and every external feature seems to be acquiring fresh and rapid development. People hurry about as if their lives depended on their speed. "I guess" and "I calculate" are frequently heard, together with "Well posted up," and "A long chalk;" and locomotives and steamers whistle all day long. Hamilton is a very Americanised place. I heard of "grievances, independence, and annexation," and, altogether, should have supposed it to be on the other side of the boundary-line.

It is situated on a little lake, called Burlington Bay, separated from Lake Ontario by a narrow strip of sandy shingle. This has been cut through, and, as two steamers leave the pier at Hamilton at the same hour every morning, there is a daily and very exciting race for the first entrance into the narrow passage. This racing is sometimes productive of very serious collisions.

The town is built upon very low and aguish ground, at the foot of a peculiar and steep eminence, which the inhabitants dignify with the name of the Mountain. I ascended this mountain, which might better be called a molehill, by a flight of a hundred and thirty steps. The view from the top was very magnificent, but, as an elevated building offered us one still more extensive, we ascended to the roof by six flights of steps, to see a camera obscura which was ostentatiously advertised. A very good camera obscura might have been worth so long an ascent in a house redolent of spirits and onions; but after we had reached the top, with a great expenditure of toil and breath, a ragged, shoeless little boy very pompously opened the door of a small wooden erection, and introduced us to four panes of coloured glass, through which we viewed the town of Hamilton, under the different aspects of spring, summer, autumn, and winter!

Dundurn Castle, a handsome, castellated, baronial-looking building, the residence of the present Premier, Sir Allan M'Nab, is near Hamilton, and it has besides some very handsome stone villa residences. There I saw, for the first and only time in the New World, beautifully kept grass lawns, with flower-beds in the English style. One very fine morning, when the maple-leaves were tinted with the first scarlet of the fall, my friends took me to see Ancaster and Dundas; the former, an old place, very like some of our grey, quiet Lancashire villages—the latter a good type of the rapid development and enterprising spirit which are making Canada West to rival the States in rapidity of progress. There were bridges in course of construction—railway embankments swarming with labourers—macadamised roads succeeding those of corduroy and plank—snake-fences giving place to those of posts and rails, and stone walls—and saw and grist mills were springing up wherever a "water privilege" could be found. Laden waggons proceeded heavily along the roads, and the encouraging announcements of "Cash for wheat," and "Cash for wool," were frequently to be seen. The views were very fine as we skirted the Mountain, but Canadian scenery is monotonous and rather gloomy; though the glorious tints of the American fall give the leaves of some of the trees the appearance rather of tropical flowers than of foliage.

Ancaster is an old place, outstripped by towns of ten years' existence, as it has neither a port nor a river. There was an agricultural show, and monster pumpkins and overgrown cabbages were displayed to admiring crowds, under the shadow of a prodigious union jack.

Dundas, a near neighbour of Ancaster, has completely eclipsed it. This appears to be one of the busiest little places in Canada West. It is a collection of woollen-mills, grist-mills, and iron-foundries; and though, in my preformed notions of political economy, I had supposed manufactures suited exclusively to an old country, in which capital and labour are alike redundant, the aspect of this place was most thriving. In one of the flour-mills the machinery seemed as perfect as in the biscuit factory at Portsmouth—by some ingenious mechanism the flour was cooled, barrelled, and branded with great celerity. At an iron-foundry I was surprised to find that steam-engines and flour-mill machinery could not be manufactured fast enough to meet the demand. In this neighbourhood I heard rather an interesting anecdote of what steady perseverance can do, in the history of a Scot from the shores of the Forth.

This young man was a pauper boy, and was apprenticed to the master of an iron-foundry in Scotland, but ran away before the expiration of his apprenticeship, and, entering a ship at Glasgow, worked his passage across to Quebec. Here he gained employment for some months as a porter, and, having saved a little money, went up to the neighbourhood of Lake Simcoe, where he became a day labourer. Here he fell in love with his master's daughter, who returned his affection, but her father scornfully rejected the humble Scotchman's suit. Love but added an incentive to ambition; and obtaining work in a neighbouring township, he increased his income by teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic in the evenings. He lived penuriously, denied himself even necessaries, and carefully treasured his hoarded savings. Late one evening, clothed almost in rags, he sought the house of his lady-love, and told her that within two years he would come to claim her hand of her father, with a waggon and pair of horses.

Still in his ragged clothing, for it does not appear that he had any other, he trudged to Toronto, and sought employment, his accumulated savings sewn up in the lining of his waistcoat. He went about from person to person, but could not obtain employment, and his waggon and horses receded further and further in the dim perspective. One day, while walking along at the unfinished end of King Street West, he saw something glittering in the mud, and, on taking it up, found it to be the steel snap of a pocket-book. This pocket-book contained notes to the amount of one hundred and fifty dollars; and the next day a reward of five-and-twenty was offered to the finder of them. The Scotchman waited on the owner, who was a tool manufacturer, and, declining the reward, asked only for work, for "leave to toil," as Burns has expressed it. This was granted him; and in less than four months he became a clerk in the establishment. His salary was gradually raised—in the evenings he obtained employment in writing for a lawyer, and his savings, judiciously managed, increased to such an extent, that at the end of eighteen months he purchased a thriving farm in the neighbourhood of London, and, as there was water-power upon it, he built a grist-mill. His industry still continued successful, and just before the two years expired he drove in a light waggon, with two hardy Canadian horses, to the dwelling of his former master, to claim his daughter's hand; though, be it remembered, he had never held any communication with her since he parted from her in rags two years before. At first they did not recognise the vagrant, ragged Scotch labourer, in the well-dressed driver and possessor of the "knowing-looking" equipage. His altered circumstances removed all difficulty on the father's part—the maiden had been constant—and soon afterwards they were married. He still continued to prosper, and add land to land; and three years after his marriage sent twenty pounds to his former master in Scotland, as a compensation for the loss of his services. Strange to say, the son of that very master is now employed in the mill of the runaway apprentice. Such instances as this, while they afford encouragement to honest industry, show at the same time the great capabilities of Canada West.

At Hamilton, where the stores are excellent, I made several purchases, but I was extremely puzzled with the Canadian currency. The States money is very convenient. I soon understood dollars, cents, and dimes; but in the colonies I never knew what my money was worth. In Prince Edward Island the sovereign is worth thirty shillings; in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia twenty-five; while in Canada, at the time of my visit, it was worth twenty-four and four pence. There your shilling is fifteen pence, or a quarter-dollar; while your quarter-dollar is a shilling. Your sixpence is seven pence-half-penny, or a "York shilling;" while your penny is a "copper" of indeterminate value apparently. Comparatively speaking, very little metallic money is in circulation. You receive bills marked five shillings, when, to your surprise, you can only change them for four metallic shillings. Altogether in Canada I had to rely upon people's honesty, or probably on their ignorance of my ignorance; for any attempts at explanation only made "confusion worse confounded," and I seldom comprehended anything of a higher grade than a "York shilling." From my stupidity about the currency, and my frequent query, "How many dollars or cents is it?" together with my offering dirty crumpled pieces of paper bearing such names as Troy, Palmyra, and Geneva, which were in fact notes of American banks which might have suspended payment, I was constantly taken, not for an ignoramus from the "Old Country," but for a "genuine Down-Easter." Canadian credit is excellent; but the banking system of the States is on a very insecure footing; some bank or other "breaks" every day, and lists of the defaulters are posted up in the steamboats and hotels.

Within a few days after my resolution never again to trust myself on Lake Ontario, I sailed down it, on a very beautiful morning, to Toronto. The royal mail steamer Arabian raced with us for the narrow entrance to the canal which connects Burlington Bay with the main lake, and both captains "piled on" to their utmost ability, but the Arabian passed us in triumph. The morning was so very fine, that I half forgot my dislike to Lake Ontario. On the land side there was a succession of slightly elevated promontories, covered with forests abounding in recent clearings, their sombre colouring being relieved by the brilliant blue of the lake. I saw, for the only time, that beautiful phenomenon called the "water-mirage," by which trees, ships, and houses are placed in the most extraordinary and sometimes inverted positions. Yet still these endless promontories stretched away, till their distant outlines were lost in the soft blue haze of the Indian summer. Yet there was an oppressiveness about the tideless water and pestilential shore, and the white-hulled ships looked like deserted punished things, whose doom for ages was to be ceaseless sailing over these gloomy waters.

At Toronto my kind friend Mr. Forrest met me. He and his wife had invited me some months before to visit them in their distant home in the Canadian bush; therefore I was not a little surprised at the equipage which awaited me at the hotel, as I had expected to jolt for twenty-two miles, over corduroy roads, in a lumber-waggon. It was the most dashing vehicle which I saw in Canada. It was a most unbush-like, sporting-looking, high, mail phaton, mounted by four steps; it had three seats, a hood in front, and a rack for luggage behind. It would hold eight persons. The body and wheels were painted bright scarlet and black; and it was drawn by a pair of very showy-looking horses, about sixteen "hands" high, with elegant and well-blacked harness. Mr. Forrest looked more like a sporting English squire than an emigrant.

We drove out of Toronto by the Lake shore road, and I could scarcely believe we were not by the sea, for a heavy surf was rolling and crashing upon the beach, and no land was in sight on the opposite side. After some time we came to a stream, with a most clumsy swing bridge, which was open for the passage of two huge rafts laden with flour. This proceeding had already occupied more than an hour, as we were informed by some unfortunate dtenus. We waited for half an hour while the raftmen dawdled about it, but the rafts could not get through the surf, so they were obliged to desist. I now reasonably supposed that they would have shut the bridge as fast as possible, as about twenty vehicles, with numerous foot-passengers, were waiting on either side; but no, they moved it for a little distance, then smoked a bit, then moved it a few inches and smoked again, and so on for another half-hour, while we were exposed to a pitiless north-east wind. They evidently enjoyed our discomfiture, and were trying how much of annoyance we would bear patiently. Fiery tempers have to be curbed in Canada West, for the same spirit which at home leads men not to "touch their hats" to those above them in station, here would vent itself in open insolence and arrogance, if one requested them to be a little quicker in their motions. The fabric would hardly come together at all, and then only three joists appeared without anything to cover them. This the men seemed to consider un fait accompli, and sat down to smoke. At length, when it seemed impossible to bear a longer detention with any semblance of patience, they covered these joists with some planks, over which our horses, used to pick their way, passed in safety, not, however, without overturning one of the boards, and leaving a most dangerous gap. This was a favourable specimen of a Canadian bridge.

The manners of the emigrants who settle in Canada are far from prepossessing. Wherever I heard torrents of slang and abuse of England; wherever I noticed brutality of manner, unaccompanied by respect to ladies, I always found upon inquiry that the delinquent had newly arrived from the old country. Some time before I visited America, I saw a letter from a young man who had emigrated, containing these words: "Here I haven't to bow and cringe to gentlemen of the aristocracy—that is, to a man who has a better coat on than myself." I was not prepared to find this feeling so very prevalent among the lower classes in our own possessions. The children are an improvement on their parents, and develop loyal and constitutional sentiments. The Irish are the noisiest of the enemies of England, and carry with them to Canada the most inveterate enmity to "Sassenach" rule. The term "slang-whangers" must have been invented for these.

After some miles of very bad road, which once had been corduroy, we got upon a plank-road, upon which the draught is nearly as light as upon a railroad. When these roads are good, the driving upon them is very easy; when they are out of repair it is just the reverse. We came to an Indian village of clap-board houses, built some years ago by Government for some families of the Six Nations who resided here with their chief; but they disliked the advances of the white man, and their remnants have removed farther to the west. We drove for many miles through woods of the American oak, little more than brushwood, but gorgeous in all shades of colouring, from the scarlet of the geranium to deep crimson and Tyrian purple. Oh! our poor faded tints of autumn, about which we write sentimental poetry! Turning sharply round a bank of moss, and descending a long hill, we entered the bush. There all my dreams of Canadian scenery were more than realised. Trees grew in every variety of the picturesque. The forest was dark and oppressively still, and such a deadly chill came on, that I drew my cloak closer around me. A fragrant but heavy smell arose, and Mr. Forrest said that we were going down into a cedar swamp, where there was a chill even in the hottest weather. It was very beautiful. Emerging from this, we came upon a little whitewashed English church, standing upon a steep knoll, with its little spire rising through the trees; and leaving this behind, we turned off upon a road through very wild country. The ground had once been cleared, but no use had been made of it, and it was covered with charred stumps about two feet high. Beyond this appeared an interminable bush. Mr. Forrest told me that his house was near, and, from the appearance of the country, I expected to come upon a log cabin; but we turned into a field, and drove under some very fine apple-trees to a house the very perfection of elegance and comfort. It looked as if a pretty villa from Norwood or Hampstead had been transported to this Canadian clearing. The dwelling was a substantially built brick one-storied house, with a deep green verandah surrounding it, as a protection from the snow in winter and the heat in summer. Apple-trees, laden with richly-coloured fruit, were planted round, and sumach-trees, in all the glorious colouring of the fall, were opposite the front door. The very house seemed to smile a welcome; and seldom have I met a more cordial one than I received from Mrs. Forrest, the kindly and graceful hostess, who met me at the door, her pretty simple dress of pink and white muslin contrasting strangely with the charred stumps which were in sight, and the long lines of gloomy bush which stood out dark and sharp against the evening sky.

"Will you go into the drawing-room?" asked Mrs. Forrest. I was surprised, for I had not associated a drawing-room with emigrant life in Canada; but I followed her along a pretty entrance-lobby, floored with polished oak, into a lofty room, furnished with all the elegances and luxuries of the mansion of an affluent Englishman at home, a beautiful piano not being wanting. It was in this house, containing every comfort, and welcomed with the kindest hospitality, that I received my first impressions of "life in the clearings." My hosts were only recovering from the fatigues of a "thrashing-bee" of the day before, and, while we were playing at bagatelle, one of the gentlemen assistants came to the door, and asked if the "Boss" were at home. A lady told me that, when she first came out, a servant asked her "How the boss liked his shirts done?" As Mrs. Moodie had not then enlightened the world on the subject of settlers' slang, the lady did not understand her, and asked what she meant by the "boss,"—to which she replied, "Why, lawk, missus, your hubby, to be sure."

I spent some time with these kind and most agreeable friends, and returned to them after a visit to the Falls of Niagara. My sojourn with them is among my sunniest memories of Canada. Though my expectations were in one sense entirely disappointed on awaking to the pleasant consciousness of reposing on the softest of feathers, I did not feel romance enough to wish myself on a buffalo robe on the floor of a log-cabin. Nearly every day I saw some operation of Canadian farming, with its difficulties and pleasures. Among the former is that of obtaining men to do the work. The wages given are five shillings per diem, and in many cases "rations" besides. While I was at Mr. Forrest's, two men were sinking a well, and one coolly took up his tools and walked away because only half a pound of butter had been allowed for breakfast. Mr. Forrest possesses sixty acres of land, fifteen of which are still in bush. The barns are very large and substantial, more so than at home; for no produce can be left out of doors in the winter. There were two hundred and fifty bushels of wheat, the produce of a "thrashing bee," and various other edibles. Oxen, huge and powerful, do all the draught-work on this farm, and their stable looked the very perfection of comfort. Round the house "snake-fences" had given place to those of post and rail; but a few hundred yards away was the uncleared bush. The land thus railed round had been cleared for some years; the grass is good, and the stumps few in number. Leaving this, we came to the stubble of last year, where the stumps were more numerous, and then to the land only cleared in the spring, covered thickly with charred stumps, the soil rich and black, and wheat springing up in all directions. Beyond this there was nothing but bush. A scramble through a bush, though very interesting in its way, produces disagreeable consequences.

When the excitement of the novelty was over, and I returned to the house, I contemplated with very woeful feelings the inroad which had been made upon my wardrobe—the garments torn in all directions beyond any possibility of repair, and the shoes reduced to the consistency of soaked brown paper with wading through a bog. It was a serious consideration to me, who at that time was travelling through the West with a very small and very wayworn portmanteau, with Glasgow, Torquay, Boston, Rock Island, and I know not what besides upon it. The bush, however, for the time being, was very enjoyable, in spite of numerous bruises and scratches. Huge pines raised their heads to heaven, others lay prostrate and rotting away, probably thrown down in some tornado. In the distance numbers of trees were lying on the ground, and men were cutting off their branches and burning them in heaps, which slowly smouldered away, and sent up clouds of curling blue smoke, which diffused itself as a thin blue veil over the dark pines.

This bush is in dangerous proximity to Mr. Forrest's house. The fire ran through it in the spring, and many of the trees, which are still standing, are blackened by its effects. One night in April, after a prolonged drought, just as the household were retiring to rest, Mr. Forrest looked out of the window, and saw a light in the bush scarcely bigger or brighter than a glow-worm. Presently it rushed up a tall pine, entwining its fiery arms round the very highest branches. The fire burned on for a fortnight; they knew it must burn till rain came, and Mr. Forrest and his man never left it day or night, all their food being carried to the bush. One night, during a breeze, it made a sudden rush towards the house. In a twinkling they got out the oxen and plough, and, some of the neighbours coming to their assistance, they ploughed up so much soil between the fire and the stubble round the house, that it stopped; but not before Mr. Forrest's straw hat was burnt, and the hair of the oxen singed. Mrs. Forrest meanwhile, though trembling for her husband's safety, was occupied in wetting blankets, and carrying them to the roof of the house, for the dry shingles would have been ignited by a spark. On our return, it was necessary to climb over some "snake" or zigzag fences about six feet high. These are fences peculiar to new countries, and though very cheap, requiring neither tools nor nails, have a peculiarly untidy appearance. It is not thought wise to buy a farm which has not enough bush or growing timber for both rails and firewood.

In clearing, of which I saw all the processes, the first is to cut down the trees, in which difficult operation axes of British manufacture are rendered useless after a few hours' work. The trees are cut about two feet above the root, and often bring others down with them in their fall. Sometimes these trees are split up at the time into rails or firewood; sometimes dragged to the saw-mills to be made into lumber; but are often piled into heaps and burnt—a necessary but prodigal waste of wood, to which I never became reconciled. When the wood has been cleared off, wheat is sown among the stumps, and then grass, which appears only to last about four years. Fire is put on the tops of these unsightly stumps to burn them down as much as possible, and when it is supposed, after two or three years, that the roots have rotted in the ground, several oxen are attached by a chain to each, and pull it out. Generally this is done by means of a "logging bee." I must explain this term, as it refers neither to the industrious insect nor the imperial bee of Napoleon. The very name reminds me of early rising, healthy activity, merriment, and a well-spread board.

A "bee" is a necessity arising from the great scarcity of labour in the New World. When a person wishes to thrash his corn, he gives notice to eight or ten of his neighbours, and a day is appointed on which they are to meet at his house. For two or three days before, grand culinary preparations are made by the hostess, and on the preceding evening a table is loaded with provisions. The morning comes, and eight or ten stalwart Saxons make their appearance, and work hard till noon, while the lady of the house is engaged in hotter work before the fire, in the preparation of hot meat, puddings, and pies; for well she knows that the good humour of her guests depends on the quantity and quality of her viands. They come in to dinner, black (from the dust of a peculiar Canadian weed), hot, tired, hungry, and thirsty. They eat as no other people eat, and set all our notions of the separability of different viands at defiance. At the end of the day they have a very substantial supper, with plenty of whisky, and, if everything has been satisfactory, the convivial proceedings are prolonged till past midnight. The giver of a "bee" is bound to attend the "bees" of all his neighbours. A "thrashing bee" is considered a very "slow affair" by the younger portion of the community. There are "quilting bees," where the thick quilts, so necessary in Canada, are fabricated; "apple bees," where this fruit is sliced and strung for the winter; "shelling bees," where peas in bushels are shelled and barrelled; and "logging bees," where the decayed stumps in the clearings are rooted up by oxen. At the quilting, apple, and shelling bees there are numbers of the fair sex, and games, dancing, and merrymaking are invariably kept up till the morning.

In the winter, as in the eastern colonies, all outdoor employments are stopped, and dancing and evening parties of different kinds are continually given. The whole country is like one vast road, and the fine, cold, aurora-lighted nights are cheery with the lively sound of the sleigh-bells, as merry parties, enveloped in furs, drive briskly over the crisp surface of the snow. The way of life at Mr. Forrest's was peculiarly agreeable. The breakfast-hour was nominally seven, and afterwards Mr. Forrest went out to his farm. The one Irish servant, who never seemed happy with her shoes on, was capable of little else than boiling potatoes, so all the preparations for dinner devolved upon Mrs. Forrest, who till she came to Canada had never attempted anything in the culinary line. I used to accompany her into the kitchen, and learned how to solve the problem which puzzled an English king, viz. "How apples get into a dumpling." We dined at the mediaeval hour of twelve, and everything was of home raising. Fresh meat is a rarity; but a calf had been killed, and furnished dinners for seven days, and the most marvellous thing was, that each day it was dressed in a different manner, Mrs. Forrest's skill in this respect rivalling that of Alexis Soyer. A home-fed pig, one of eleven slaughtered on one fell day, produced the excellent ham; the squash and potatoes were from the garden; and the bread and beer were from home- grown wheat and hops. After dinner Mr. Forrest and I used to take lengthy rides, along wild roads, on horses of extraordinary capabilities, and in the evening we used to have bagatelle and reading aloud. Such was life in the clearings. On one or two evenings some very agreeable neighbours came in; and in addition to bagatelle we had puzzles, conundrums, and conjuring tricks. One of these "neighbours" was a young married lady, the prettiest person I had seen in America. She was a French Canadian, and added to the graces of person and manner for which they are famed a cleverness and sprightliness peculiarly her own. I was very much pleased with the friendly, agreeable society of the neighbourhood. There are a great many gentlemen residing there, with fixed incomes, who have adopted Canada as their home because of the comforts which they can enjoy in an untaxed country, and one in which it is not necessary to keep up appearances. For instance, a gentleman does not lose caste by grooming his own horse, or driving his own produce to market in a lumber-waggon; and a lady is not less a lady, though she may wear a dress and bonnet of a fashion three years old.

I was surprised one morning by the phenomenon of some morning-callers— yes, morning-callers in a Canadian clearing. I sighed to think that such a pest and accompaniment of civilisation should have crossed the Atlantic. The "callers" of that morning, the Haldimands, amused me very much. They give themselves great airs—Canada with them is a "wretched hole;" the society is composed of "boors." In a few minutes they had asked me who I was—where I came from—what I was doing there—how I got to know my friends—and if I had come to live with them. Mr. Haldimands, finding I came from England, asked me if I knew a certain beautiful young lady, and recounted his flirtations with her. Dukes, earls, and viscounts flowed from his nimble tongue—"When I was hunting with Lord this," or "When I was waltzing with Lady that." His regrets were after the Opera and Almack's, and his height of felicity seemed to be driving a four-in-hand drag. After expatiating to me in the most vociferous manner on the delights of titled society, he turned to Mrs. Forrest and said, "After the society in which we used to move, you may imagine how distasteful all this is to us"—barely a civil speech, I thought. This eccentric individual was taking a lady, whom he considered a person of consequence, for a drive in a carriage, when a man driving a lumber-waggon kept crossing the road in front of him, hindering his progress. Mr. Haldimands gradually got into a towering passion, which resulted in his springing out, throwing the reins to the lady, and rushing furiously at the teamster with his fists squared, shouting in a perfect scream, "Flesh and blood can't bear this. One of us must die!" The man whipped up his horses and made off, and Mr. Haldimands tried in vain to hush up a story which made him appear so superlatively ridiculous.

We actually paid some morning visits, and I thought the society very agreeable and free from gossip. One of our visits was paid to the family of one of the oldest settlers in Canada. His place was the very perfection of beauty; it was built in a park formed out of a civilised wood, the grounds extending to the verge of a precipice, looking from which I saw the river, sometimes glittering in the sunshine, sometimes foaming along in a wood—just realising Mrs. Moodie's charming description of the Otonabee. Far below, the water glittered like diamond sparks among the dark woods; pines had fallen into and across it, in the way in which trees only fall in America, and no two trees were of the same tint; the wild vine hung over the precipice, and smothered the trees with its clusters and tendrils; and hurriedly in some places, gently in others, the cold rivulet flowed down to the lake,—no bold speculator having as yet dared to turn the water privilege to account.

My first ride was an amusing one, for various reasons. My riding-habit was left at Toronto, but this seemed not to be a difficulty. Mrs. Forrest's fashionable habit and white gauntlet-gloves fitted me beautifully; and the difficulty about a hat was at once overcome by sending to an obliging neighbour, who politely sent a very stylish-looking plumed riding-hat. There was a side-saddle and a most elegant bridle; indeed, the whole equipment would not have disgraced Rotten Row. But, the horse! My courage had to be "screwed to the sticking point" before I could mount him. He was a very fine animal—a magnificent coal-black charger sixteen hands high, with a most determined will of his own, not broken for the saddle. Mr. Forrest rode a splendid bay, which seldom went over six consecutive yards of ground without performing some erratic movement. My horse's paces were, a tremendous trot, breaking sometimes into a furious gallop, in both which he acted in a perfectly independent manner, any attempts of mine to control him with my whole strength and weight being alike useless. We came to the top of a precipice overlooking the river, where his gyrations were so fearful that I turned him into the bush. It appeared to me a ride of imminent dangers and hair-breadth escapes. By this beauteous river we came to a place where rain and flood had worn the precipice into a steep declivity, shelving towards another precipice, and my horse, accustomed to it, took me down where an English donkey would scarcely have ventured. Beauty might be written upon everything in this dell. I never saw a fairer compound of rock, wood, and water. Above was flat and comparatively uninteresting country; then these precipices, with trees growing out wherever they could find a footing, arrayed in all the gorgeous colouring of the American fall. At the foot of these was a narrow, bright-green savannah, with fine trees growing upon it, as though planted by some one anxious to produce a park-like effect. Above this, the dell contracted to the width of Dovedale, and through it all, the river, sometimes a foaming, brawling stream, at others fringed with flowers, and quiescent in deep, clear pools, pours down to the lake. After galloping upon this savannah we plunged into the river, and, after our horses had broken through a plank-bridge at the great risk of their legs, we rode for many miles through bush and clearing, down sandy tracks and scratching thickets, to the pebbly beach of Lake Ontario.

The contrast between the horses and their equipments, and the country we rode through, was somewhat singular. The former were suitable for Hyde Park; the latter was mere bush-riding—climbing down precipices, fording rapid rivers, scrambling through fences and over timber, floundering in mud, going through the bush with hands before us to push the branches from our faces, and, finally, watering our horses in the blue, deep waters of Lake Ontario—yet I never enjoyed a ride along the green lanes of England so much as this one in the wild scenery of Canada.

The Sundays that I spent at Mr. Forrest's were very enjoyable, though the heat of the first was nearly insupportable, and the cold of the last like that of an English Christmas in bygone years. There are multitudes of Presbyterians in Western Canada, who worship in their pure and simple faith with as much fervency and sincerity as did their covenanting forefathers in the days of the persecuting Dundee; and the quaint old Psalms, to which they are so much attached, sung to the strange old tunes, sound to them as sweet among the backwoods of Canada as in the peaceful villages of the Lowlands, or in the remote Highland glens, where I have often listened to their slow and plaintive strains borne upon the mountain breezes. "Are ye frae the braes of Gleneffar?" said an old Scotchwoman to me; "were ye at our kirk o' Sabbath last, ye would na' ken the difference."

The Irishman declaims against the land he has forsaken—the Englishman too often suffers the remembrance of his poverty to sever the tie which binds him to the land of his birth—but where shall we find the Scotchman in whose breast love of his country is not a prominent feeling? Whether it be the light-haired Saxon from the South, or the dark-haired, sallow-visaged Celt from the Highlands, driven forth by the gaunt hand of famine, all look back to Scotland as to "their country"—the mention of its name kindles animation in the dim eye of age, and causes the bounding heart of youth to leap with enthusiasm. It may be that the Scotch emigrant's only remembrance is of the cold hut on the lone hill-side, where years wore away in poverty and hunger, but to him it is the dearest spot of earth. It may be that he has attained a competence in Canada, and that its fertile soil produces crops which the heathery braes of Scotland would never yield—no matter, it is yet his home!—it is the land where his fathers sleep—it is the land of his birth; his dreams are of the "mountain and the flood"—of lonely lochs and mountain-girded firths; and when the purple light on a summer evening streams over the forest, he fancies that the same beams are falling on Morven and the Cuchullins, and that the soft sound pervading the air is the echo of the shepherd's pipe. To the latest hour of his life he cherishes the idea of returning to some homestead by a tumbling burnie. He never can bring himself to utter to his mountain land, from the depths of his heart, the melancholy words, "Che til na tuille." [Footnote: "We return no more."]

The Episcopal church was only two miles from us, but we were most mercilessly jolted over a plank-road, where many of the planks had made a descent into a sea of mud, on the depth of which I did not attempt to speculate. Even in beautiful England I never saw a prettier sight than the assembling of the congregation. The church is built upon a very steep little knoll, the base of which is nearly encircled by a river. Close to it is a long shed, in which the horses are tethered during service, and little belligerent sounds, such as screaming and kicking, occasionally find their way into church. The building is light and pretty inside, very simple, but in excellent taste; and though there is no organ, the singing and chanting, conducted by the younger portion of the congregation, is on a par with some of the best in our town churches at home. There were no persons poorly clad, and all looked happy, sturdy, and independent. The bright scarlet leaves of the oak and maple pressed against the windows, giving them in the sunlight something of the appearance of stained glass; the rippling of the river was heard below, and round us, far, far away, stretched the forest. Here, where the great Manitou was once worshipped, a purer faith now reigns, and the allegiance of the people is more firmly established by "the sound of the church-going bells" than by the bayonets of our troops. These heaven-pointing spires are links between Canada and England; they remind the emigrant of the ivy-mantled church in which he was first taught to bend his knees to his Creator, and of the hallowed dust around its walls, where the sacred ashes of his fathers sleep.

There is great attachment to England among those who are protected by her laws, and live under the shadow of her standard of freedom. In many instances, no remembrances of wrongs received, of injuries sustained, of hopeless poverty and ill-requited toil, can sever that holiest, most sacred of ties, which binds, until his latest breath, the heart of the exile to his native land.

The great annoyance of which people complain in this pleasant land is the difficulty of obtaining domestic servants, and the extraordinary specimens of humanity who go out in this capacity. It is difficult to obtain any, and those that are procured are solely Irish Roman Catholics, who think it a great hardship to wear shoes, and speak of their master as the "boss." At one house where I visited, the servant or "help," after condescending to bring in the dinner, took a book from the chiffonier, and sat down on the sofa to read it. On being remonstrated with for her conduct, she replied that she "would not remain an hour in a house where those she helped had an objection to a young lady's improving her mind!" At an hotel at Toronto, one chambermaid, pointing to another, said, "That young lady will show you your room." I left Mr. Forrest's even for three days with great regret, and after a nine miles drive on a very wet morning, and a water transit of two hours, found myself at Toronto, where as usual on the wharf I was greeted by the clamorous demand for "wharfage." I found the Walrences and other agreeable acquaintances at Russell's hotel, but was surprised with what I thought rather a want of discrimination on the part of all; I was showing a valuable collection of autographs, beginning with Cromwell, and containing, in addition to those of several deceased and living royal personages, valuable letters of Scott, Byron, Wellington, Russell, Palmerston, Wilberforce, Dickens, &c. The shades of kings, statesmen, and poets, might almost have been incited to appear, when the signature of Richard Cobden was preferred before all.



CHAPTER XI.

"I've seen nothing"—A disappointment—Incongruities—Hotel gaieties and "doing Niagara"—Irish drosky-drivers—"The Hell of Waters"—Beauties of Niagara—The picnic party—The White Canoe—A cold shower-bath—"The Thunder of Waters"—A magic word—"The Whirlpool"—Story of "Bloody Run"— Yankee opinions of English ladies—A metamorphosis—The nigger guide—A terrible situation—Termination Rock—Impressions of Niagara—Juvenile precocity—A midnight journey—Street adventures in Hamilton.

"Have you seen the Falls?"—"No." "Then you've seen nothing of America." I might have seen Trenton Falls, Gennessee Falls, the Falls of Montmorenci and Lorette; but I had seen nothing if I had not seen the Falls (par excellence) of Niagara. There were divers reasons why my friends in the States were anxious that I should see Niagara. One was, as I was frequently told, that all I had seen, even to the "Prayer Eyes," would go for nothing on my return; for in England, America was supposed to be a vast tract of country containing one town—New York; and one astonishing natural phenomenon, called Niagara. "See New York, Quebec, and Niagara," was the direction I received when I started upon my travels. I never could make out how, but somehow or other, from my earliest infancy, I had been familiar with the name of Niagara, and, from the numerous pictures I had seen of it, I could, I suppose, have sketched a very accurate likeness of the Horse-shoe Fall. Since I landed at Portland, I had continually met with people who went into ecstatic raptures with Niagara; and after passing within sight of its spray, and within hearing of its roar—after seeing it the great centre of attraction to all persons of every class—my desire to see it for myself became absorbing. Numerous difficulties had arisen, and at one time I had reluctantly given up all hope of seeing it, when Mr. and Mrs. Walrence kindly said, that, if I would go with them, they would return to the east by way of Niagara.

Between the anticipation of this event, and the din of the rejoicings for the "capture of Sebastopol," I slept very little on the night before leaving Toronto, and was by no means sorry when the cold grey of dawn quenched the light of tar-barrels and gas-lamps. I crossed Lake Ontario in the iron steamer Peerless; the lake was rough as usual, and, after a promenade of two hours on the spray-drenched deck, I retired to the cabin, and spent some time in dreamily wondering whether Niagara itself would compensate for the discomforts of the journey thither. Captain D—— gravely informed me that there were "a good many cases" below, and I never saw people so deplorably sea-sick as in this steamer. An Indian officer who had crossed the Line seventeen times was sea-sick for the first time on Lake Ontario. The short, cross, chopping seas affect most people. The only persons in the saloon who were not discomposed by them were two tall school-girls, who seemed to have innumerable whispered confidences and secrets to confide to each other.

We touched the wharf at Niagara, a town on the British side of the Niagara river—"cars for Buffalo, all aboard,"—and just crossing a platform, we entered the Canada cars, and on the top of some frightful precipices, and round some terrific curves, we were whirled to the Clifton House at Niagara. I left the cars, and walked down the slope to the verge of the cliff; I forgot my friends, who had called me to the hotel to lunch—I forgot everything—for I was looking at the Falls of Niagara.

"No more than this!—what seem'd it now By that far flood to stand? A thousand streams of lovelier flow Bathe my own mountain land, And thence o'er waste and ocean track Their wild sweet voices call'd me back.

They call'd me back to many a glade, My childhood's haunt of play, Where brightly 'mid the birchen shade Their waters glanced away: They call'd me with their thousand waves Back to my fathers' hills and graves."

The feelings which Mrs. Hemans had attributed to Bruce at the source of the Nile, were mine as I took my first view of Niagara. The Horse-shoe Fall at some distance to my right was partially hidden, but directly in front of me were the American and Crescent Falls. The former is perfectly straight, and looked like a gigantic mill-weir. This resemblance is further heightened by an enormous wooden many-windowed fabric, said to be the largest paper-mill in the United States. A whole collection of mills disfigures this romantic spot, which has received the name of Manchester, and bids fair to become a thriving manufacturing town! Even on the British side, where one would have hoped for a better state of things, there is a great fungus growth of museums, curiosity-shops, taverns, and pagodas with shining tin cupolas. Not far from where I stood, the members of a picnic party were flirting and laughing hilariously, throwing chicken-bones and peach-stones over the cliff, drinking champagne and soda-water. Just as I had succeeded in attaining the proper degree of mental abstraction with which it is necessary to contemplate Niagara, a ragged drosky-driver came up, "Yer honour, may be ye're in want of a carriage? I'll take ye the whole round—Goat Island, Whirlpool, and Deil's Hole—for the matter of four dollars." Niagara made a matter of "a round," dollars, and cents, was too much for my equanimity; and in the hope of losing my feelings of disappointment, I went into the Clifton House, enduring a whole volley of requests from the half-tipsy drosky-drivers who thronged the doorway.

This celebrated hotel, which is kept on the American plan, is a huge white block of building, with three green verandahs round it, and can accommodate about four hundred people. In the summer season it is the abode of almost unparalleled gaiety. Here congregate tourists, merchants, lawyers, officers, senators, wealthy southerners, and sallow down-easters, all flying alike from business and heat. Here meet all ranks, those of the highest character, and those who have no character to lose; those who by some fortunate accident have become possessed of a few dollars, and those whose mine of wealth lies in the gambling-house—all for the time being on terms of perfect equality. Balls, in doors and out of doors, nightly succeed to parties and picnics; the most novel of which are those in the beautiful garden in front of the hotel. This garden has spacious lawns lighted by lamps; and here, as in the 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' the visitors dance on summer evenings to the strains of invisible music. But at the time of my second visit to the Falls all the gaiety was over; the men of business had returned to the cities, the southerners had fled to their sunny homes—part of the house was shut up, and in the great dining- room, with tables for three hundred, we sat down to lunch with about twenty-five persons, most of them Americans and Germans of the most repulsive description. After this meal, eaten in the "five minutes all aboard" style, we started on a sight-seeing expedition. Instead of being allowed to sit quietly on Table Rock, gazing upon the cataract, the visitor, yielding to the demands of a supposed necessity, is dragged a weary round—he must see the Falls from the front, from above, and from below; he must go behind them, and be drenched by them; he must descend spiral staircases at the risk of his limbs, and cross ferries at that of his life; he must visit Bloody Run, the Burning Springs, and Indian curiosity-shops, which have nothing to do with them at all; and when the poor wretch is thoroughly bewildered and wearied by "doing Niagara," he is allowed to steal quietly off to what he really came to see—the mighty Horse-shoe Fall, with all its accompaniments of majesty, sublimity, and terror.

Round the door of the Clifton House were about twenty ragged, vociferous drosky-drivers, of most demoralised appearance, all clamorous for "a fare." "We want to go to Goat Island; how much is it?" "Five dollars." "I'll take you for four dollars and a half." "No, sir, he's a cheat and a blackguard; I'll take you for four." "I'll take you as cheap as any one," shouts a man in rags; "I'll take you for three." "Very well." "I'll take you as cheap as he; he's drunk, and his carriage isn't fit for a lady to step into," shouted the man who at first asked five dollars. After this they commenced a regular mle, when blows were given and received, and frequent allusions were made to "the bones of St. Patrick." At last our friend in rags succeeded in driving up to the door, and we found his carriage really unfit for ladies, as the stuffing in most places was quite bare, and the step and splash-boards were only kept in their places by pieces of rope. The shouting and squabbling were accompanied by Niagara, whose deep awful thundering bass drowns all other sounds.

We drove for two miles along the precipice bank of the Niagara river: this precipice is 250 feet high, without a parapet, and the green, deep flood rages below. At the Suspension Bridge they demanded a toll of sixty cents, and contemptuously refused two five-dollar notes offered them by Mr. Walrence, saying they were only waste paper. This extraordinary bridge, over which a train of cars weighing 440 tons has recently passed, has a span of 800 feet, and a double roadway, the upper one being used by the railway. The floor of the bridge is 230 feet above the river, and the depth of the river immediately under it is 250 feet! The view from it is magnificent; to the left the furious river, confined in a narrow space, rushes in rapids to the Whirlpool; and to the right the Horse-shoe Fall pours its torrent of waters into the dark and ever invisible abyss. When we reached the American side we had to declare to a custom-house officer that we were no smugglers; and then by an awful road, partly covered with stumps, and partly full of holes, over the one, and through the other, our half-tipsy driver jolted us, till we wished ourselves a thousand miles from Niagara Falls. "There now, faith, and wasn't I nearly done for myself?" he exclaimed, as a jolt threw him from his seat, nearly over the dash-board.

We passed through the town bearing the names of Niagara Falls and Manchester, an agglomeration of tea-gardens, curiosity-shops, and monster hotels, with domes of shining tin. We drove down a steep hill, and crossed a very insecure-looking wooden bridge to a small wooded island, where a man with a strong nasal twang demanded a toll of twenty-five cents, and anon we crossed a long bridge over the lesser rapids.

The cloudy morning had given place to a glorious day, abounding in varieties of light and shade; a slight shower had fallen, and the sparkling rain-drops hung from every leaf and twig; a rainbow spanned the Niagara river, and the leaves wore the glorious scarlet and crimson tints of the American autumn. Sun and sky were propitious; it was the season and the day in which to see Niagara. Quarrelsome drosky drivers, incongruous mills, and the thousand trumperies of the place, were all forgotten in the perfect beauty of the scene—in the full, the joyous realisation of my ideas of Niagara. Beauty and terror here formed a perfect combination. Around islets covered with fair foliage of trees and vines, and carpeted with moss untrodden by the foot of man, the waters, in wild turmoil, rage and foam: rushing on recklessly beneath the trembling bridge on which we stood to their doomed fall. This place is called "The Hell of Waters," and has been the scene of more than one terrible tragedy.

This bridge took us to Iris Island, so named from the rainbows which perpetually hover round its base. Everything of terrestrial beauty may be found in Iris Island. It stands amid the eternal din of the waters, a barrier between the Canadian and American Falls. It is not more than sixty-two acres in extent, yet it has groves of huge forest trees, and secluded roads underneath them in the deepest shade, far apparently from the busy world, yet thousands from every part of the globe yearly tread its walks of beauty. We stopped at the top of a dizzy pathway, and, leaving the Walrences to purchase some curiosities, I descended it, crossed a trembling foot-bridge, and stood alone on Luna Island, between the Crescent and American Falls. This beauteous and richly-embowered little spot, which is said to tremble, and looks as if any wave might sweep it away, has a view of matchless magnificence. From it can be seen the whole expanse of the American rapids, rolling and struggling down, chafing the sunny islets, as if jealous of their beauty. The Canadian Fall was on my left; away in front stretched the scarlet woods; the incongruities of the place were out of sight; and at my feet the broad sheet of the American Fall tumbled down in terrible majesty. The violence of the rapids cannot be imagined by one who has not seen their resistless force. The turbulent waters are flung upwards, as if infuriated against the sky. The rocks, whose jagged points are seen among them, fling off the hurried and foamy waves, as if with supernatural strength. Nearer and nearer they come to the Fall, becoming every instant more agitated; they seem to recoil as they approach its verge; a momentary calm follows, and then, like all their predecessors, they go down the abyss together. There is something very exciting in this view; one cannot help investing Niagara with feelings of human agony and apprehension; one feels a new sensation, something neither terror, wonder, nor admiration, as one looks at the phenomena which it displays. I have been surprised to see how a visit to the Falls galvanises the most matter-of-fact person into a brief exercise of the imaginative powers.

As the sound of the muffled drum too often accompanies the trumpet, so the beauty of Luna Island must ever remain associated in my mind with a terrible catastrophe which recently occurred there. Niagara was at its gayest, and the summer at its hottest, when a joyous party went to spend the day on Luna Island. It consisted of a Mr. and Mrs. De Forest, their beautiful child "Nettie," a young man of great talent and promise, Mr. Addington, and a few other persons. It was a fair evening in June, when moonlight was struggling for ascendancy with the declining beams of the setting sun. The elders of the party, being tired, repaired to the seats on Iris Island to rest, Mr. De Forest calling to Nettie, "Come here, my child; don't go near the water." "Never mind—let her alone—I'll watch her," said Mr. Addington, for the child was very beautiful and a great favourite, and the youthful members of the party started for Luna Island. Nettie pulled Addington's coat in her glee. "Ah! you rogue, you're caught," said he, catching hold of her; "shall I throw you in?" She sprang forward from his arms, one step too far, and fell into the roaring rapid. "Oh, mercy! save—she's gone!" the young man cried, and sprang into the water. He caught hold of Nettie, and, by one or two vigorous strokes, aided by an eddy, was brought close to the Island; one instant more, and his terrified companions would have been able to lay hold of him; but no— the hour of both was come; the waves of the rapid hurried them past; one piercing cry came from Mr. Addington's lips, "For Jesus' sake, O save our souls!" and, locked in each other's arms, both were carried over the fatal Falls. The dashing torrent rolled onward, unheeding that bitter despairing cry of human agony, and the bodies of these two, hurried into eternity in the bloom of youth, were not found for some days. Mrs. De Forest did not long survive the fate of her child.

The guide related to me another story in which my readers may be interested, as it is one of the poetical legends of the Indians. It took place in years now long gone by, when the Indians worshipped the Great Spirit where they beheld such a manifestation of his power. Here, where the presence of Deity made the forest ring, and the ground tremble, the Indians offered a living sacrifice once a year, to be conveyed by the water spirit to the unknown gulf. Annually, in the month of August, the sachem gave the word, and fruits and flowers were stowed in a white canoe, to be paddled by the fairest maiden among the tribes.

The tribe thought itself highly honoured when its turn came to float the blooming offering to the shrine of the Great Spirit, and still more honoured was the maid who was a fitting sacrifice.

Oronto, the proudest chief of the Senecas, had an only child named Lena. This chief was a noted and dreaded warrior; over many a bloody fight his single eagle plume had waved, and ever in battle he left the red track of his hatchet and tomahawk. Years rolled by, and every one sent its summer offering to the thunder god of the then unexplored Niagara. Oronto danced at many a feast which followed the sacrificial gift, which his tribe had rejoicingly given in their turn. He felt not for the fathers whose children were thus taken from their wigwams, and committed to the grave of the roaring waters. Calma, his wife, had fallen by a foeman's arrow, and in the blood of his enemies he had terribly avenged his bereavement. Fifteen years had passed since then, and the infant which Calma left had matured into a beautiful maiden. The day of sacrifice came; it was the year of the Senecas, and Lena was acknowledged to be the fairest maiden of the tribe. The moonlit hour has come, the rejoicing dance goes on; Oronto has, without a tear, parted from his child, to meet her in the happy hunting-grounds where the Great Spirit reigns. The yell of triumph rises from the assembled Indians. The white canoe, loosed by the sachems, has shot from the bank, but ere it has sped from the shore another dancing craft has gone forth upon the whirling water, and both have set out on a voyage to eternity.