A Yankee in Canada Chapter V. The Scenery of Quebec; and the River St. Lawrence
by Henry David Thoreau
About twelve
o'clock this day, being in the Lower Town, I looked up at the signal-gun by the flag-staff
on Cape Diamond, and saw a soldier up in the heavens there making preparations to fire
it,-both he and the gun in bold relief against the sky. Soon after, being warned by
the boom of the gun to look up again, there was only the cannon in the sky, the smoke just
blowing away from it, as if the soldier, having touched it off, had concealed himself for
effect, leaving the sound to echo grandly from shore to shore, and far up and down the
river. This answered the purpose of a dinner-horn.
There are no such
restaurateurs in Quebec or Montreal as there are in Boston. I hunted an hour or two in
vain in this town to find one, till I lost my appetite. In one house, called a
restaurateur, where lunches were advertised, I found only tables covered with bottles and
glasses innumerable, containing apparently a sample of every liquid that has been known
since the earth dried up after the flood, but no scent of solid food did I perceive gross
enough to excite a hungry mouse. In short, I saw nothing to tempt me there, but a large
map of Canada against the wall. In another place I once more got as far as the bottles,
and then asked for a bill of fare; was told to walk up stairs; had no bill of fare,
nothing but fare. "Have you any pies or pudding?" I inquired, for I am obliged
to keep my savageness in check by a low diet. "No, sir; we've nice mutton-chop, roast
beef, beef-steak, cutlets," and so on. A burly Englishman, who was in the midst of
the siege of a piece of roast beef, and of whom I have never had a front view to this day,
turned half round, with his mouth half full, and remarked, "You'll find no pies nor
puddings in Quebec, sir; they don't make any here." I found that it was even so, and
therefore bought some musty cake and some fruit in the open market-place. This
market-place by the waterside, where the old women sat by their tables in the open air,
amid a dense crowd jabbering all languages, was the best place in Quebec to observe the
people; and the ferry-boats, continually coming and going with their motley crews and
cargoes, added much to the entertainment. I also saw them getting water from the river,
for Quebec is supplied with water by cart and barrel. This city impressed me as wholly
foreign and French, for I scarcely heard the sound of the English language in the streets.
More than three fifths of the inhabitants are of French origin; and if the traveller did
not visit the fortifications particularly, he might not be reminded that the English have
any foothold here; and, in any case, if he looked no farther than Quebec, they would
appear to have planted themselves in Canada only as they have in Spain at Gibraltar; and
he who plants upon a rock cannot expect much increase. The novel sights and sounds by the
water-side made me think of such ports as Boulogne, Dieppe, Rouen, and Havre de Grace,
which I have never seen; but I have no doubt that they present similar scenes. I was much
amused from first to last with the sounds made by the charrette and caleche drivers. It
was that part of their foreign language that you heard the most of,-the French they
talked to their horses,-and which they talked the loudest. It was a more novel sound
to me than the French of conversation. The streets resounded with the cries, "Qui
donc!" "March tôt!" I suspect that many of our horses which
came from Canada would prick up their ears at these sounds. Of the shops, I was most
attracted by those where furs and Indian works were sold, as containing articles of
genuine Canadian manufacture. I have been told that two townsmen of mine, who were
interested in horticulture, travelling once in Canada, and being in Quebec, thought it
would be a good opportunity to obtain seeds of the real Canada crook-neck squash. So they
went into a shop where such things were advertised, and inquired for the same. The
shopkeeper had the very thing they wanted. "But are you sure," they asked,
"that these are the genuine Canada crook-neck?" "O yes, gentlemen,"
answered he, "they are a lot which I have received directly from Boston," I
resolved that my Canada crook-neck seeds should be such as had grown in Canada.
Too much has not been
said about the scenery of Quebec. The fortifications of Cape Diamond are omni-present.
They preside, they frown over the river and surrounding country. You travel ten, twenty,
thirty miles amid the hills on either side, and then, when you have long since forgotten
them, perchance slept on them by the way, at a turn of the road or of your body, there
they are still, with their geometry against the sky. The child that is born and brought up
thirty miles distant, and has never travelled to the city, reads his country's history,
sees the level lines of the citadel amid the cloud-built citadels in the western horizon,
and is told that that is Quebec. No wonder if Jacques Cartier's pilot exclaimed in Norman
French, Quebec!-"What a beak!"-when he saw this cape, as some
suppose. Every modern traveller involuntarily uses a similar expression. Particularly it
is said that its sudden apparition on turning Point Levi makes a memorable impression on
him who arrives by water. The view from Cape Diamond has been compared by European
travellers with the most remarkable views of a similar kind in Europe, such as from
Edinburgh Castle, Gibraltar, Cintra, and others, and preferred by many. A main peculiarity
in this, compared with other views which I have beheld, is that it is from the ramparts of
a fortified city, and not from a solitary and majestic river cape alone that this view is
obtained. I associate the beauty of Quebec with the steel-like and flashing air, which may
be peculiar to that season of the year, in which the blue flowers of the succory and some
late golden-rods and buttercups on the summit of Cape Diamond were almost my only
companions,-the former bluer than the heavens they faced. Yet even I yielded in some
degree to the influence of historical associations, and found it hard to attend to the
geology of Cape Diamond or the botony of the Plains of Abraham. I still remember the
harbor far beneath me, sparkling like silver in the sun,-the answering highlands of
Point Levi on the southeast,-the frowning Cap Tourmente abruptly bounding the seaward
view far in the northeast,-the villages of Lorette and Charlesbourg on the
north,-and further west the distant Val Cartier, sparkling with white cottages,
hardly removed by distance through the clear air,-not to mention a few blue mountains
along the horizon in that direction. You look out from the ramparts of the citadel beyond
the frontiers of civilizaiton. Yonder small group of hills, according to the guidebook,
forms "the portal of the wilds which are trodden only by the feet of the Indian
hunters as far as Hudson's Bay." It is but a few years since Bouchette declared that
the country ten leagues north of the British capital of North America was as little known
as the middle of Africa. Thus the citadel under my feet, and all historical associations,
were swept away again by an influence from the wilds and from nature, as if the beholder
had read her history,-an influence which, like the Great River itself, flowed from
the Arctic fastnesses and Western forests with irrisistible tide over all.
The most interesting
object in Canada to me was the River St. Lawrence, known far and wide, and for centuries,
as the Great River. Cartier, its discoverer, sailed up it as far as Montreal in
1535,-nearly a century before the coming of the Pilgrims; and I have seen a pretty
accurate map of it so far, containing the city of "Hochelaga" and the river
"Saguenay," in Ortelius's TheatrumOrbis Terrarum, printed at Antwerp in
1575,-the first edition having appeared in 1570,-in which the famous cities of
"Norumbega" and "Orsinora" stand on the rough-blocked continent where
New England is to-day, and the fabulous but unfortunate Isle of Demons, and
Frislant, and
others, lie off and on in the unfrequented sea, some of them prowling near what is now the
course of the Cunard steamers. In this ponderous folio of the "Ptolemy of his
age," said to be the first general atlas published after the revival of the sciences
in Europe, only one page of which is devoted to the topography of the Novus Orbis,
the St. Lawrence is the only large river, whether drawn from fancy or from observation, on
the east side of North America. It was famous in europe before the other rivers of North
America were heard of, notwithstanding that the mouth of the Mississippi, or even the
Hudson, was known to the world. Schoolcraft was misled by Gallatin into saying that
Narvaez discovered the Mississippi. DeVega does not say so. The first explorers
declared that the summer in that country was as warm as France, and they named one of the
bays in the Gulf of St. Lawrence the Bay of Chaleur, or of warmth; but they said nothing
about the winter being as cold as Greenland. In the manuscript account of Cartier's second
voyage, attributed by some to that navigator himself, it is called "the greatest
river, without comparison, that is known to have ever been seen." The savages told
him that it was the "chemin du Canada,"-the highway to
Canada,-"which goes so far that no man had ever been to the end that they had
heard." The Saguenay, one of its tributaries, which the panorama has made known to
New England within three years, is described by Cartier, in 1535, and still more
particularly by Jean Alphonse, in 1542, who adds, "I think that this river comes from
the sea of Cathay, for in this place there issues a strong current, and there runs there a
terrible tide," The early explorers saw many whales and other sea-monsters far up the
St. Lawrence. Champlain, in his map, represents a whale spouting in the harbor of Quebec,
three hundred and sixty miles from what is called the mouth of the river; and Charlevoix
takes his reader to the summit of Cape Diamond to see the "porpoises, white as
snow," sporting on the surface of the harbor of Quebec. And Boucher says in 1661,
"from there (Tadoussae) to Montreal is found a great quantity of Marsouins blancs."
Several whales have been taken pretty high up the river since I was there. P. A.
Gosse, in
his "Canadian Naturalist," p. 171 (London, 1840), speaks of "the white
dolphin of the St. Lawrence (DelphinumCanadensis)," as considered different
from those of the sea. "The Natural History Society of Montreal offered a prize, a
few years ago, for an essay on the Cetacea of the St. Lawrence, which was, I
believe, handed in." In Champlain's day it was commonly called "the Great River
of Canada." More than one nation has claimed it. In Ogilby's "America of
1670," in the map Novi Belgii, it is called "De Groote Rivier van Niew
Nederlandt," It bears different names in different parts of its course, as it flows
through what were formerly the territories of different nations. From the Gulf to Lake
Ontario it is called at present the St. Lawrence; from Montreal to the same place it is
known successively as the Niagra, Detroit, St. Clair, St. Mary's, and St. Louis rivers.
Humboldt, speaking of the Orinoco, says that this name is unknown in the interior of the
country; so likewise the tribes that dwell about the sources of the St. Lawrence have
never heard the name which it bears in the lower part of its course. It rises near another
father of waters,-the Mississippi,-issuing from a remarkable spring far up in
the woods, called Lake Superior, fifteen hundred miles in circumference; and several other
springs there are thereabouts which feed it. It makes such a noise in its tumbling down at
one place as is heard all round the world. Bouchette, the Surveyor- General of the
Canadas, calls it "the most splendid river on the globe"; says that it is two
thousand statute miles long (more recent geographers make it four or five hundred miles
longer); that at the Riviagere du Sud it is eleven miles wide; at the Traverse thirteen;
at the Paps of Matane, twenty-five; at the Seven Islands, seventy-three; and at its mouth,
from Cape Rosier to the Mingan Settlements in Labrador, near one hundred and five (?)
miles wide. According to Captain Bayfield's recent chart it is about ninety-six
geographical miles wide at the latter place, measuring at right angles with the stream. It
has much the largest estuary, regarding both length and breadth, of any river on the
globe. Humboldt says that the river Plate, which has the broadest estuary of the South
American rivers, is ninety-two geographical miles wide at its mouth; also he found the
Orinoco to be more than three miles wide at five hundred and sixty miles from its mouth;
but he does not tell us that ships of six hundred tons can sail up it so far, as they can
up the St. Lawrence to Montreal,-an equal distance. If he had described a fleet of
such ships at anchor in a city's port so far inland, we should have got a very different
idea of the Orinoco. Perhaps Charlevoix describes the St. Lawrence truly as the most navigable
river in the world. Between Montreal and Quebec it averages about two miles wide. The tide
is felt as far up as Three Rivers, four hundred and thirty-two miles, which is as far as
from Boston to Washington. As far up as Cap aux Oyes, sixty or seventy miles below Quebec,
Kalm found a great part of the plants near the shore to be marine, as glass-wort (Salicornia),
seaside pease (Pisum maritimum), sea-milkwort (Glaux), beach-grass (Psammaarenarium),
seaside plantain (Plantago maritima), the sea-rocket (Banias cakile),
&c.
The geographer Cuyot
observes that the Maranon is three thousand miles long, and gathers its waters from a
surface of a million and a half square miles; that the Mississippi is also three thousand
miles long, but its basin covers only from eight to nine hundred thousand square miles;
that the St. Lawrence is eighteen hundred miles long, and its basin covers more than a
million square miles (Darby says five hundred thousand); and speaking of the lakes, he
adds, "These vast fresh-water seas, together with the St. Lawrence, cover a surface
of nearly one hundred thousand square miles, and it has been calculated that they contain
about one half of all the fresh water on the surface of our planet." But all these
calculations are necessarily very rude and inaccurate. Its tributaries, the Ottawa, St.
Maurice, and Saguenay, are great rivers themselves. The latter is said to be more than one
thousand (?) feet deep at its mouth, while its cliffs rise perpendicularly an equal
distance above its surface. Pilots say there are no soundings till one hundred and fifty
miles up the St. Lawrence. The greatest sounding in the river, given on Bayfield's chart
of the gulf and river, is two hundred and twenty-eight fathoms. McTaggert, an engineer,
observes that "the Ottawa is larger than all the rivers in Great Britain, were they
running in one." The traveller Grey writes: "A dozen Danubes,
Rhines, Taguses,
and Thameses would be nothing to twenty miles of fresh water in breadth (as where he
happened to be), from ten to forty fathoms in depth." And again: "There is not
perhaps in the whole extent of this immense continent so fine an approach to it as by the
river St. Lawrence. In the Southern States you have, in general, a level country for many
miles inland; here you are introduced at once into a majestic scenery, where everything is
on a grand scale,-mountains, woods, lakes, rivers, precipices, waterfalls."
We have not yet the
data for a minute comparison of the St. Lawrence with the South American rivers; but it is
obvious that, taking it in connection with its lakes, its estuary, and its falls, it
easily bears off the palm from all the rivers on the globe; for though, as Bouchette
observes, it may not carry to the ocean a greater volume of water than the Amazon and
Mississippi, its surface and cubic mass are far greater than theirs. But, unfortunately,
this noble river is closed by ice from the beginning of December to the middle of April.
The arrival of the first vessel from England when the ice breaks up is, therefore, a great
event, as when the salmon, shad, and alewives come up a river in the spring to relieve the
famishing inhabitants on its banks. Who can say what would have been the history of this
continent if, as has been suggested, this river had emptied into the sea where New York
Stands?
After visiting the
Museum and taking one more look at the wall, I made haste to the Lord Sydenham steamer,
which at five o'clock was to leave for Montreal. I had already taken a seat on deck, but
finding that I had still an hour and a half to spare, and remembering that large map of
Canada which I had seen in the parlor of the restaurateur in my search after pudding, and
realizing that I might never see the like out of the country, I returned thither, asked
liberty to look at the map, rolled up the mahogany table, put my handkerchief on it, stood
on it, and copied all I wanted before the maid came in and said to me standing on the
table, "Some gentlemen want the room, sir"; and I retreated without having
broken the neck of a single bottle, or my own, very thankful and willing to pay for all
the solid food I had got. We were soon abreast of Cap Rouge, eight miles above Quebec,
after we got underway. It was in this place, then called "Fort du France Roy,"
that the Sieur de Roberval with his company, having sent home two of this three ships,
spent the winter of 1542-43. It appears that they fared in the following manner (I
translate from the original): "Each mess had only two loaves, weighing each a pound,
and half a pound of beef. They ate pork for dinner, with half a pound of butter, and beef
for supper, with about two handfuls of beans, without butter. Wednesdays, Fridays, and
Saturdays they ate salted code, and sometimes green, for dinner, with butter; and porpoise
and beans for supper. Monsieur Roberval administered good justice, and punished each
according to his offence. One, named Michel Gaillon, was hung for theft; John of Nantes
was put in irons and imprisoned for his fault; and others were likewise put in irons; and
many were whipped, both men and women; by which means they lived in peace and
tranqulity." In an account of a voyage up this river, printed in the Jesuit Relations
in the year 1664, it is said: "It was an interesting navigation for us in ascending
the river from Cap Tourment to Quebec, to see on this side and on that, for the space of
eight leagues, the farms and the houses of the company, built by our French, all along
these shores. On the right, the seigniories of Beauport, of Notre Dame des
Anges; and on
the left, this beautiful Isle of Orleans." The same traveller names among the fruits
of the country observed at the Isles of Richelieu, at the head of Lake St. Peter,
"kinds (des esageccs) of little apples or haws (senelles), and of
pears, which only ripen with the frost."
Night came on before
we had passed the high banks. We had come from Montreal to Quebec in one night. The return
voyage, against the stream, takes but an hour longer. Jacques Cartier, the first white man
who is known to have ascended this river, thus speaks of his voyage from what is now
Quebec to the foot of Lake St. Peter, or about half-way to Montreal: "From the said
day, the 19th, even to the 28th of the said month [September, 1535], we had been
navigating up the said river without losing hour or day, during which time we had seen and
found as much country and lands as level as we could desire, full of the most beautiful
trees in the world," which he goes on to describe. But we merely slept and woke again
to find that we had passed through all that country which he was eight days in sailing
through. He must have had a troubled sleep. We were not long enough on the river to
realize that it had length; we got only the impression of its breadth, as if we had passed
over a lake a mile or two in breadth and several miles long, though we might thus have
slept through a European kingdom. Being at the head of Lake St. Peter, on the
above-mentioned 28th of September, dealing with the natives, Cartier says: "We
inquired of them by signs if this was the route to Hochelaga [Montreal]; and they answered
that it was, and that there were yet three days journeys to go there."
When I went on deck
at dawn we had already passed through Lake St. Peter, and saw islands ahead of us. Our
boat advancing with a strong and steady pulse over the calm surface, we felt as if we were
permitted to be awake in the scenery of a dream. Many vivacious Lombardy poplars along the
distant shores gave them a novel and lively, though artificial look, and contrasted
strangely with the slender and graceful elms on both shores and islands. The church of
Varennes, fifteen miles from Montreal, was conspicuous at a great distance before us,
appearing to belong to, and rise out of, the river; and now, and before, Mount Royal
indicated where the city was. We arrived about seven o'clock, and set forth immediately to
ascend the mountain, two miles distant, going across lots in spite of numerous signs
threatening the severest penalties to trespassers, past an old building known as the
MacTavish property,-Simon MacTavish, I suppose, whom Silliman refers to as "in a
sense the founder of the Northwestern Company." His tomb was behind in the woods,
with a remarkably high wall and higher monument. The family returned to Europe. He could
not have imagined how dead he would be in a few years, and all the more dead and forgotten
for being buried under such a mass of gloomy stone, where not even memory could get at him
without a crowbar. Ah! poor man, with that last end of his! However, he may have been the
worthiest of mortals for aught that I know. From the mountain-top we got a view of the
whole city; the flat, fertile, extensive island; the noble sea of the St. Lawrence
swelling into lakes; the mountains about St. Hyacinth, and in Vermont and New York; and
the mouth of the Ottawa in the west, overlooking that St. Ann's where the voyageur sings
his "parting hymn," and bids adieu to civilization,-a name, thanks to
Moore's verses, the most suggestive of poetic associations of any in Canada. We, too,
climbed the hill which Cartier first of white men, ascended, and named Mont-real, (the 3rd
of October, O.S., 1535), and, like him, "we saw the said river as far as we could
see, grand, large, etspacieux, going to the southwest," toward
that land whither Donnacona had told the discoverer that he had been a month's journey
from Canada, where there grew "force Canelle et Girofle," much cinnamon
and cloves, and where also, as the natives told him, were three great lakes and afterward une
mer douce,-a sweet sea,-de laquelle n'est mention avoir vu le bout,
of which there is no mention to have seen the end. But instead of an Indian town far in
the interior of a new world, with guides to show us where the river came from, we found a
splendid and bustling stone-built city of white men, and only a few squalid Indians
offered to sell us baskets at the Lachine Railroad Depot, and Hochelaga is, perchance, but
the fancy name of an engine company or an eating house.
We left Montreal
Wednesday, the 2d of October, late in the afternoon. In the LaPrairie cars the Yankees
made themselves merry, imitating the cries of the charrette-drivers to perfection, greatly
to the amusement of some French-Canadian travellers, and they kept it up all the way to
Boston. I saw one person on board the boat at St. John's, and one or two more elsewhere in
Canada, wearing homespun gray great-coats, or capotes, with conical and comical hoods,
which fell back betwen their shoulders like small bags, ready to be turned up over the
head when occasion required, though a hat usurped that place now. They looked as if they
would be convenient and proper enough as long as the coats were new and tidy, but would
soon come to have a beggarly and unsightly look, akin to rags and dust-holes. We reached
Burlington early in the morning, where the Yankees tried to pass off their Canada coppers,
but the news-boys knew better. Returning through the Green Mountains, I was reminded that
I had not seen in Canada such brilliant autumnal tints as I had previously seen in
Vermont. Perhaps there was not yet so great and sudden a contrast with the summer heats in
the former country as in these mountain valleys. As we were passing through Ashburnham, by
a new white house which stood at some distance in a field, one passenger exclaimed, so
that all in the car could hear him, "There, there's not so good a house as that in
all Canada!" I did not much wonder at his remark, for there is a neatness, as well as
evident prosperity, a certain elastic easiness of circumstances, so to speak, when not
rich, about a New England house, as if the proprietor could at least afford to make
repairs in the spring, which the Canadian houses do not suggest. Though of stone, they are
not better constructed than a stone barn would be with us; the only building, except the
chateau, and while every village here contains at least several gentlemen or
"squires", there there is but one to a seigniory.
I got home this
Thursday evening, having spent just one week in Canada and travelled eleven hundred miles.
The whole expense of this journey, including two guidebooks and a map, which cost one
dollar twelve and a half cents, was twelve dollars seventy five cents. I do not suppose
that I have seen all British America; that could not be done by a cheap excursion, unless
it were a cheap excursion to the Icy Sea, as seen by Hearne or McKenzie, and then, no
doubt, some interesting features would be omitted. I wished to go a little way behind that
word Canadense, of which naturalists make such frequent use; and I should like
still right well to make a longer excursion on foot through the wilder parts of Canada,
which perhaps might be called Iter Canadense.