| By Author | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Title | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Language |
|
Download this book: [ ASCII | HTML | PDF ] Look for this book on Amazon Tweet |
Title: America, Volume IV (of 6)
Author: Cook, Joel, 1842-1910
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "America, Volume IV (of 6)" ***
available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org)
Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive. See
https://archive.org/details/americaj04cookrich
Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
The Title Page and Table of Contents for this book refer
to it as Volume IV. The page and chapter numbering is
consistent with this being the second half of the previous
volume (whose title page says it is Volume III but whose
Table of Contents refers to it as Volume II.)
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original
document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors
have been corrected.
[Illustration: _Brandt Lake, Adirondacks_]
_Edition Artistique_
The World's Famous Places and Peoples
AMERICA
by
JOEL COOK
In Six Volumes
Volume IV.
Merrill and Baker
New York London
THIS EDITION ARTISTIQUE OF THE WORLD'S FAMOUS PLACES AND PEOPLES IS
LIMITED TO ONE THOUSAND NUMBERED AND REGISTERED COPIES, OF WHICH THIS
COPY IS NO. 205
Copyright, Henry T. Coates & Co., 1900
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME IV
PAGE
BRANDT LAKE, ADIRONDACKS _Frontispiece_
MONUMENT TO JONATHAN EDWARDS, STOCKBRIDGE,
MASS. 256
OLD FORT TICONDEROGA 290
WATKINS GLEN 362
IN THE THOUSAND ISLANDS, ST. LAWRENCE 412
CHAUDIÈRE FALLS, ST. LAWRENCE 450
MONTCALM'S HEADQUARTERS, QUEBEC 474
A GLIMPSE OF THE BERKSHIRE HILLS.
XI.
A GLIMPSE OF THE BERKSHIRE HILLS.
Berkshire Magnificence -- Taghkanic Range -- Housatonic River
-- Autumnal Forest Tints -- Old Graylock -- Fitchburg Railroad
-- Hoosac Mountain and Tunnel -- Williamstown -- Williams
College -- North Adams -- Fort Massachusetts -- Adams --
Lanesboro -- Pittsfield -- Heart of Berkshire -- The
Color-Bearer -- Latimer Fugitive Slave Case -- Old Clock on the
Stairs -- Pontoosuc Lake -- Ononta Lake -- Berry Pond -- Lily
Bowl -- Ope of Promise -- Lenox -- Fanny Kemble -- Henry Ward
Beecher -- Mount Ephraim -- Yokun-town -- Stockbridge Bowl --
Lake Mahkeenac -- Nathaniel Hawthorne -- House of the Seven
Gables -- Oliver Wendell Holmes -- Lanier Hill -- Laurel Lake
-- Lee -- Stockbridge -- Field Hill -- John Sergeant --
Stockbridge Indians -- Jonathan Edwards -- Edwards Hall --
Sedgwick Family and Tombs -- Theodore Sedgwick -- Catherine
Maria Sedgwick -- Monument Mountain -- The Pulpit -- Ice Glen
-- Great Barrington -- William Cullen Bryant -- The Minister's
Wooing -- Kellogg Terrace -- Mrs. Hopkins-Searles -- Sheffield
-- Mount Everett -- Mount Washington -- Shays' Rebellion --
Boston Corner -- Salisbury -- Winterberg -- Bash-Bish Falls --
Housatonic Great Falls -- Litchfield -- Bantam Lake --
Birthplace of the Beechers -- Wolcott House -- Wolcottville --
John Brown -- Danbury -- Hat-making -- General Wooster --
Ansonia -- Derby -- Isaac Hull -- Robert G. Ingersoll's Tribute
-- Berkshire Hills and Homes.
BERKSHIRE MAGNIFICENCE.
IN ascending the Hudson River, its eastern hill-border for many miles
was the blue and distant Taghkanic range, which encloses the
attractive region of Berkshire. When the Indians from the Hudson
Valley climbed over those hills they found to the eastward a
beautiful stream, which they called the Housatonic, the "River beyond
the Mountains." This picturesque river rises in the Berkshire hills,
and flowing for one hundred and fifty miles southward by a winding
course through Massachusetts and Connecticut, finally empties into
Long Island Sound. Berkshire is the western county of Massachusetts, a
region of exquisite loveliness that has no peer in New England,
covering a surface about fifty miles long, extending entirely across
the State, and about twenty miles wide. Two mountain ranges bound the
intermediate valley, and these, with their outcroppings, make the
noted Berkshire hills that have drawn the warmest praises from the
greatest American poets and authors. Longfellow, Whittier, Bryant,
Hawthorne, Beecher and many others have written their song and story,
which are interwoven with our best literature. It is a region of
mountain peaks and lakes, of lovely vales and delicious views, and the
exhilarating air and pure waters, combined with the exquisite scenery,
have made it constantly attractive. Beecher early wrote that it "is
yet to be as celebrated as the Lake District of England, or the
hill-country of Palestine." One writer tells of the "holiday-hills
lifting their wreathed and crowned heads in the resplendent days of
autumn;" another describes it as "a region of hill and valley,
mountain and lake, beautiful rivers and laughing brooks." Miss
Sedgwick, who journeyed thither on the railroad up the Westfield
Valley from the Connecticut River, wrote, "We have entered Berkshire
by a road far superior to the Appian Way. On every side are rich
valleys and smiling hillsides, and, deep-set in their hollows, lovely
lakes sparkle like gems." Fanny Kemble long lived at Lenox, in one of
the most beautiful parts of the district, and she wished to be buried
in its churchyard on the hill, saying, "I will not rise to trouble
anyone if they will let me sleep here. I will only ask to be permitted
once in a while to raise my head and look out upon the glorious
scene."
To these Berkshire hills the visitors go to see the brilliant autumnal
tints of the American forests in their greatest perfection. When
copious autumn rains have made the foliage luxuriant, much will remain
vigorous after parts have been turned by frosts. This puts green into
the Berkshire panorama to enhance the olives of the birch, the grayish
pinks of the ash, the scarlets of the maple, the deep reds of the oak
and the bright yellows of the poplar. When in such a combination,
these make a magnificent contrast of brilliant leaf-coloring, and
while it lasts, the mantle of purple and gold, of bright flame and
resplendent green, with the almost dazzling yellows that cover the
autumnal mountain slopes, give one of the richest feasts of color ever
seen. This magnificence of the Berkshire autumn coloring inspired
Beecher to write, "Have the evening clouds, suffused with sunset,
dropped down and become fixed into solid forms? Have the rainbows that
followed autumn storms faded upon the mountains and left their mantles
there? What a mighty chorus of colors do the trees roll down the
valleys, up the hillsides, and over the mountains!" From Williamstown
to Salisbury the region stretches, the Taghkanic range bounding it on
the west, and the Hoosac Mountain on the east. The northern guardian
is double-peaked Old Graylock, the monarch of the Berkshire hills, in
the Taghkanic range, the scarred surfaces, exposed in huge bare places
far up their sides, showing the white marble formation of these hills.
WILLIAMSTOWN TO PITTSFIELD.
The Fitchburg railroad, coming from Troy on the Hudson to Boston,
crosses the northern part of the district and pierces the Hoosac
Mountain by a famous tunnel, nearly five miles long, which cost
Massachusetts $16,000,000, the greatest railway tunnel in the United
States. This railroad follows the charming Deerfield River Valley up
to the mountain, from the east, and it seeks the Hudson northwestward
down the Hoosac River, the "place of stones," passing under the shadow
of Old Graylock, rising in solid grandeur over thirty-five hundred
feet, the highest Massachusetts mountain, at the northwest corner of
the State. A tower on the top gives a view all around the horizon,
with attractive glimpses of the winding Hoosac and Housatonic
Valleys. Nearby is Williamstown, the seat of Williams College, with
four hundred students, its buildings being the chief feature of the
village. President Garfield was a graduate of this College, and
William Cullen Bryant for some time a student, writing much of his
early poetry here. Five miles eastward is the manufacturing town of
North Adams, with twenty thousand people, in the narrow valley of the
Hoosac, whose current turns its mill-wheels. A short distance down the
Hoosac, at a road crossing, was the site of old Fort Massachusetts,
the "Thermopylæ of New England" in the early French and Indian War,
where, in 1746, its garrison of twenty-two men held the fort two days
against an attacking force of nine hundred, of whom they killed
forty-seven and wounded many more, only yielding when every grain of
powder was gone.
Journeying southward up the Hoosac through its picturesque valley, the
narrow, winding stream turns many mills, while "Old Greylock,
cloud-girdled on his purple throne," stands guardian at its northern
verge. There are various villages, mostly in decadence, many of their
people having migrated, and the mills have to supplement water-power
with steam, the drouths being frequent. Of the little town of Adams on
the Hoosac, Susan B. Anthony was the most famous inhabitant, and in
Lanesboro "Josh Billings," then named H. W. Shaw, was born in 1818,
before he wandered away to become an auctioneer and humorist. The
head of the Hoosac is a reservoir lake, made to store its waters that
they may better serve the mills below, and almost embracing its
sources are the branching head-streams of the Housatonic, which flows
to the southward. This part of the intervale, being the most elevated,
is a region of sloughs and lakes, from which the watershed tapers in
both directions. Upon this high plateau, more than a thousand feet
above the tidal level, is located the county-seat of Berkshire,
Pittsfield, named in honor of William Pitt, the elder, in 1761. The
Boston and Albany Railroad crosses the Berkshires through the town,
and then climbing around the Hoosac range goes off down Westfield
River to the Connecticut at Springfield. The Public Green of
Pittsfield, located, as in all New England towns, in its centre, is
called the "Heart of Berkshire." Upon it stands Launt Thompson's noted
bronze statue of the "Color-Bearer," cast from cannon given by
Congress,--a spirited young soldier in fatigue uniform, holding aloft
the flag. This statue is reproduced on the Gettysburg battlefield, and
it is the monument of five officers and ninety men of Pittsfield
killed in the Civil War. At the dedication of this statue was read
Whittier's eloquent lyric, "Massachusetts to Virginia," which was
inspired by the "Latimer fugitive slave case" in 1842. An owner from
Norfolk claimed the fugitive in Boston, and was awarded him by the
courts, but the decision caused so much excitement that the slave's
emancipation was purchased for $400, the owner gladly taking the money
rather than pursue the case further. Thus said Whittier:
"A voice from lips whereon the coal from Freedom's shrine hath been
Thrilled as but yesterday the breasts of Berkshire's mountain men;
The echoes of that solemn voice are sadly lingering still
In all our sunny valleys, on every wind-swept hill.
"And sandy Barnstable rose up, wet with the salt sea-spray;
And Bristol sent her answering shout down Narragansett Bay;
Along the broad Connecticut old Hampden felt the thrill,
And the cheer of Hampshire's woodmen swept down from Holyoke Hill:
"'No slave-hunt in our borders--no pirate on our strand!
No fetters in the Bay State--no slave upon our land!'"
Bordering this famous Green are the churches and public buildings of
Pittsfield, while not far away a spacious and comfortable mansion is
pointed out which for many years was the summer home of Longfellow,
and the place where he found "The Old Clock on the Stairs"--the clock
is said to still remain in the house. The Pittsfield streets lead out
in every direction to lovely scenes on mountain slopes or the banks of
lakes. The Agassiz Association for the study of natural history has
its headquarters in Pittsfield, there being a thousand local chapters
in various parts of the world. This pleasant region was the Indian
domain of Pontoosuc, "the haunt of the winter deer," and this is the
name of one of the prettiest adjacent lakes just north of the town on
the Williamstown road. Ononta is another of exquisite contour, west of
the town, a romantic lakelet elevated eighteen hundred feet, which
gives Pittsfield its water supply, and has an attractive park upon its
shores. On the mountain to the northwest is Berry Pond, its margin of
silvery sand strewn with delicate fibrous mica and snowy quartz. Here,
in various directions, are the "Opes," as the beautiful vista views
are called, along the vales opening through and among the hills. One
of these, to the southward, overlooks the lakelet of the "Lily Bowl."
Here lived Herman Melville, the rover of the seas, when he wrote his
sea-novels. The chief of these vales is to the northwest of
Pittsfield, the "Ope of Promise," giving a view over the "Promised
Land." We are told that this tract was named with grim Yankee humor,
because the original grant of the title to the land was "long
promised, long delayed."
LENOX.
A fine road, with exquisite views, leads a few miles southward to
Lenox, the "gem among the mountains," as Professor Silliman called it,
standing upon a high ridge at twelve hundred feet elevation, and
rising far above the general floor of the valley, the mountain ridges
bounding it upon either hand, being about five miles apart, and having
pleasant intervales between. There is a population of about three
thousand, but summer and autumn sojourners greatly enlarge this, when
throngs of happy pilgrims from the large cities come here, most of
them having their own villas. The crests and slopes of the hills round
about Lenox are crowned by mansions, many of them costly and imposing,
adding to the charms of the landscape. At the head of the main street,
the highest point of the village, stands the old Puritan
Congregational Church, with its little white wooden belfry and a view
all around the compass. This primitive church recalls many memories of
the good old times, before fashion sought out Lenox and worshipped at
its shrine:
"They had rigid manners and homespun breeches
In the good old times;
They hunted Indians and hung up witches
In the good old times;
They toiled and moiled from sun to sun,
And they counted sinful all kinds of fun,
And they went to meeting armed with a gun,
In the good old times."
Far to the northward, seen from this old church, beyond many swelling
knolls and ridges, rises Old Graylock, looking like a recumbent
elephant, as the clouds overhang its twin rounded peaks, thirty miles
away. From the church door, facing the south and looking over and
beyond the village, there is such a panorama that even without the
devotion of the inspired Psalmist, one might prefer to stand in the
door of the Lord's house rather than dwell in tent, tabernacle or
mansion. This glorious view is over two valleys, one on either hand,
their bordering ridges covered with the fairest foliage. To the
distant southwest, where the Housatonic Valley stretches away in
winding courses, the stream flowing in wayward fashion across the
view, there are many ridgy hills, finally fading into the horizon
beyond the Connecticut boundary. The immediate hillside is covered
with the churchyard graves, and then slopes down into the village,
with its surrounding galaxy of villas, among which little lakes glint
in the sunlight. It is no wonder that Fanny Kemble, who lived here at
intervals for many years, desired to be buried at this church door,
for she could not have found a fairer resting-place, though Henry Ward
Beecher, another summer sojourner, in his enthusiasm expressed the
hope that in her life to come she would "behold one so much fairer
that this scenic beauty shall fade to a shadow."
The earliest settlements in this part of the Berkshires, then a
dangerous Indian frontier, were in 1750; and a few years later, when
peace was restored, lands were bought and two towns started, one
called Mount Ephraim and the other Yokun-town, after an Indian chief.
The Duke of Richmond, whose family name was Lenox, had taken strong
ground in favor of the American colonists, and in gratitude these
towns, when subsequently incorporated, were called, the former
Richmond, and the latter Lenox. The duke's coat-of-arms hangs upon the
wall in the village Library of Lenox. In 1787 Lenox was made the
county-seat of Berkshire, so continuing for eighty-one years, and its
present church was built in 1806, replacing an older one. It began to
be a summer resort at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and
became fashionable after Fanny Kemble, then the great celebrity,
visited it about 1838, and stopped at the "Berkshire Coffee House,"
setting the fashion of early rising by requiring her horse to be
saddled and bridled and promptly at the door at seven o'clock in the
morning, for a daily gallop of ten or twelve miles before breakfast.
Lenox has now developed into so much wealth, fashion and luxury, that
it is known as "the Newport of the Berkshires." Its one long village
main street contains the Library and hotels, and in all directions
pleasant roads lead out to the hills and vales around, which are
developed in every way that wealth and art can master. The broad and
charming grass-bordered main street, under its rows of stately
overarching elms, leads southward down the hill among the villas. The
deep adjacent valleys, with their many and varied knolls and slopes,
give such grand outlooks that dwellings can be placed almost anywhere
to advantage, most of them being spacious and impressive, their
elaborate architecture adding to the attractions.
THE STOCKBRIDGE BOWL.
Southward from Lenox is the outer elevated rim of the "Stockbridge
Bowl," a deep basin among the hills, and one can look down within this
grand amphitheatre upon Lake Mahkeenac nestling there, with the rocky
and chaotic top of the distant Monument Mountain closing the view
beyond. There are attractive villas perched upon all the knolls and
terraces surrounding this famous "Bowl," and one modest older mansion
overlooks it among so much modern magnificence--Nathaniel Hawthorne's
"House of the Seven Gables," the remains of which are still shown.
Here he lived for a few years in a quaint little red wooden house,
looking as if built in bits, and having a glorious view for miles away
across the lake. Mrs. Hawthorne once described this house in a letter
to her mother as "the reddest little thing, which looks like the
smallest of ten-foot houses." Nearby is the farm where he got milk,
the route to which he called the "milky-way." They have named the road
leading out from Lenox to this house, in his honor, "Hawthorne
Street." The view over the lake from its back windows was so
enchanting that he was very proud of it, and Mrs. Hawthorne records
that one day Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who then lived near
Pittsfield, rode down to make a call. They insisted on his coming in
"to get a peep at the lake through the boudoir window," while
Hawthorne himself held the doctor's horse at the door. The humorist,
on returning, acknowledged the kindness with a pleasantry, saying, "Is
there another man in all America that ever had such honor as to have
the author of 'The Scarlet Letter' hold his horse?"
The rides around the "Stockbridge Bowl" are delicious. Over the hills
they go, up and down the terraces widely encircling the grand basin,
now under arching canopies of elms, then through the forest, past
little lakelets, with fascinating views in all directions, and always
having the placid lake for a central gem down in the "Bowl." There are
villas on all the points of vantage--red-topped and white-topped--the
princely palaces of wealthy bankers and merchants. One of the most
noted of these villas on Lanier Hill, high above the "Bowl" and the
surrounding vales, gives opportunity to overlook several lakes, and
study the rock-ribbed structure of the charming region, thrust up in
crags and layers of white marble. The walls and stonework of the
buildings are chiefly white, contrasting prettily with the foliage and
greensward. Here is seen the Laurel Lake, and beyond is the village of
Lee, nestling in the deep valley along the winding Housatonic, its
tall white church spire rising among the trees, yet far down among the
surrounding hills. All the adjacent slopes are covered with villas,
and the marble-quarries and paper-mills have made the town's fortune.
There are about four thousand people, and the Lee quarries are among
the most noted in America. The pure white marble, cut out of deep
fissures alongside the Housatonic, has built many famous structures,
including the two largest buildings in the country, the Capitol at
Washington and the Philadelphia City Hall, and also St. Patrick's
Cathedral in New York. Lee was named in the Revolution, after "Light
Horse Harry" of Virginia.
STOCKBRIDGE AND ITS INDIANS.
Across an intervening ridge beyond the "Bowl" is the village of
Stockbridge. The wayward Housatonic encircles Lee, and flows athwart
the valley towards the west, thus making a meadow on which this
pleasant settlement stands. In the autumn, turkeys strut about, and
pumpkins lie profusely in the fields, preparing for the annual New
England feast of roast turkey and pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving Day--the
great Puritan holiday that has spread over the country. Monument
Mountain and Bear Mountain to the southward guard the smaller glen
into which the highway leads, with Stockbridge scattered through it
upon the winding river banks. This region was settled earlier than
Lenox, the first colonists from the Connecticut Valley venturing out
upon the Indian trail across the Hoosac range in 1725 to take up a
grant in the Southern Berkshires. They found here, on the river bank,
the Mohican Indian village of Housatonnuc, and established relations
of the greatest friendliness. Field's Hill overlooks the town, where
Cyrus W. Field, of Atlantic cable memory, and his brothers were born.
Stockbridge has been described as one of "the delicious surprises of
Berkshire," quiet and seemingly almost asleep beneath its embowering
meadow elms under the rim of the hills upon the river-bordered plain.
Upon the wide green street stands a solid square stone tower, with a
clock and chimes, bearing the inscription, "This memorial marks the
spot where stood the little church in which John Sergeant preached to
the Indians in 1739." This handsome tower, standing in front of the
Congregational Church, was the gift of David Dudley Field to his
birthplace.
These Indians called themselves the Muhhekanews, or "the people of the
great moving waters," and Sergeant was sent as a missionary among
them, laboring fifteen years. They were afterwards called the
Stockbridge Indians. Jonathan Edwards, the renowned metaphysician, who
had differences with the church at Northampton, succeeded Sergeant,
and came out into the Berkshire wilderness, living among these Indians
and preaching by the aid of interpreters. This great pastor lived
happily at Stockbridge for six years on an annual salary of $35, with
$10 extra paid in fuel, and in one of the oldest houses of the village
wrote his celebrated work on _The Freedom of the Will_. He left
Stockbridge to become President of Princeton College in New Jersey.
The Stockbridge Indians had a wonderful tradition. They said that a
great people crossed deep waters from a far-distant continent in the
northwest, and by many pilgrimages marched to the seashore and the
valley of the Hudson. Here they built cities and lived until a famine
scattered them, and many died. Wandering afterwards for years in quest
of a precarious living, they lost their arts and manners, and part of
them settled in the village on the Housatonic, where the Puritans
found them. They gladly received Sergeant's ministry, and he baptized
over a hundred of them, translating the New Testament and part of the
Old into their language. When Edwards came, in 1751, there were one
hundred and fifty Indian families, and but six English families. Many
were in the Continental army in the Revolution, and a company of these
Indians won distinction in the battle of White Plains, near New York.
They were dispersed in later days, some going to Western New York and
others to the far West; but on the slope of a hill adjoining the river
remains their old graveyard, a rugged weather-worn shaft surmounting a
stone pile to mark it.
[Illustration: _Monument to Jonathan Edwards, Stockbridge, Mass._]
Upon the green village main street is Edwards' little old wooden
house, having three small windows above the ponderous door. It is now
called "Edwards Hall," and a granite obelisk out in front, erected by
his descendants in 1871, preserves the memory of the great divine.
Over opposite is the venerable Sedgwick Mansion, the home of the
famous Sedgwick family. Farther up the street is the Cemetery, where
the most interesting feature is the enclosure set apart for their
tombs, the graves being arranged in circles around the central tomb of
Judge Theodore Sedgwick, the founder. He was a native of Hartford,
born in 1746, migrated to Sheffield in Berkshire, and finally settled
at Stockbridge after the Revolution, becoming one of the leading
statesmen of New England, prominent in the old Federal party, Member
of Congress and Senator from Massachusetts, and Speaker of the House.
He was subsequently made Judge of the Massachusetts Supreme Court,
dying in office in 1813. His children and descendants surround his
grave, among them his daughter, the distinguished authoress, Catherine
Maria Sedgwick, born at Stockbridge in 1789, who died in 1867.
A few miles to the southeast is Monument Mountain, the Indian
"Fisher's Nest," one of the most curious and attractive of the
Berkshire hills on account of its position and form, although the
summit is not very high, less than thirteen hundred feet. Its rock
formations are fine, being of white quartz, and on the eastern side is
a detached cliff with a huge pinnacle nearly a hundred feet high,
known as the "Pulpit." Hawthorne greatly admired this mountain, at
which he looked from his boudoir window across the lake, and in its
autumn hues he said it appeared like "a headless sphinx wrapped in a
rich Persian shawl," seen across a valley that was "a vast basin
filled with sunshine as with wine." The mountain received its modern
name from a cairn found on the summit, the tradition telling of a
mythical Indian maiden who got crossed in love, and as a consequence
jumped off the topmost cliff, being dashed to pieces. Her tribe, when
they passed that way, each added a stone to the pile, thus building
the cairn. There are many stones thrown all around this peculiarly
rugged mountain, which is piled up with white marble crags in a region
where abrupt peaks are seen almost everywhere. In among these cliffs
is the Ice Glen, a cold and narrow cleft where ice may be found in
midsummer, it is so secluded from sunshine. The appearance of Monument
Mountain made a strong impression on William Cullen Bryant, who thus
described it:
"To the north, a path
Conducts you up the narrow battlements.
Steep is the western side, shaggy and wild,
With many trees and pinnacles of flint,
And many a haughty crag. But to the east
Sheer to the vale go down the bare old cliffs,
Huge pillars that in middle heaven uprear
Their weather-beaten capitals--here dark
With the thick moss of centuries, and there
Of chalky whiteness, where the thunderbolt
Hath smitten them."
GREAT BARRINGTON.
To the southward farther, the widening Housatonic circles about the
valley, bordered with willows and alders, and hidden frequently by
cliffs and forests. Hills terrace the horizon, with mountain peaks
among them. Through the gorges the road follows down the circling
river, which constantly turns more mill-wheels, its waters pouring
over frequent white marble dams and bubbling upon rapids, with steep
tree-clad slopes adorning the banks and making attractive views.
Monument Mountain's long ridge gradually falls off, and the intervale
broadens as the Housatonic winds in wider channel to Great Barrington.
This is another typical New England village, embowered by the
stateliest of elms, spreading along its broad green-bordered street,
with a galaxy of hills encircling the intervale in which it stands,
and lofty Mount Everett rising grandly over its southwestern verge. To
the eastward is the special hill of Great Barrington, giving the town
its name. Beecher described it as "one of those places which one never
enters without wishing never to leave." William Cullen Bryant for
several years, ending with 1825, was the town clerk of Great
Barrington, and the records of that time are in his handwriting; his
house is still preserved. For a quarter of a century Dr. Samuel
Hopkins lived here, the hero of Mrs. Stowe's novel, the _Minister's
Wooing_. On the lowlands by the river is the costliest country-house
in the Berkshires, Kellogg Terrace, built by Mrs. Hopkins-Searles, a
magnificent structure of blue and white marbles, with red-tiled roofs,
and most elaborately fitted up, upon which $1,500,000 was expended.
It is carefully concealed from view from the village street by a
massive stone wall and well-arranged trees. This mansion principally
illustrates the affection the New England emigrant always bears for
the home of youth. Mark Hopkins went away from the Berkshires to
California to make a fortune and die. His childless widow, a native of
Great Barrington, had $30,000,000, and came back to live on the farm
where she had spent her childhood. She determined to rear a memorial,
and built this French-Gothic palace of the native Berkshire marbles,
exceeding at the time, in costliness and magnificence, any other
private dwelling outside of New York City. As the building gradually
grew, she became so enamored of it and its designer that she took the
architect, Mr. Searles, for a second husband. Then she died, and he
became its possessor. Yet it cannot be seen, except by climbing up a
high hill to the eastward, where one can look down upon its red-tiled
roofs on the low-lying meadow almost by the river side. The
Congregational Church of Great Barrington has the Hopkins Memorial
Manse, regarded as the finest parsonage in the United States, which
cost $100,000 to build.
Following farther down the Housatonic, the village of Sheffield,
another domain of marble quarries, is reached, with the same broad,
quiet, green-bordered and elm-shaded village street, and famed for
having furnished the marble to build Girard College and its
magnificent colonnade at Philadelphia. The "Sheffield Elm" in the
southern part of the town, a noble tree of great age, was given fame
by the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table." To the westward is the broad
and solid mass of Mount Everett, often called Mount Washington, the
southern outpost of the Taghkanic range, and the sentinel guarding the
southwestern corner of Massachusetts, as Old Graylock guards the
northwest corner. This mountain rises over twenty-six hundred feet,
the "Dome of the Taghkanics." From its summit can be surveyed to the
westward the valley of the Hudson, while beyond, at the horizon, the
distant Catskills hang, in the words of Dr. Hitchcock, "like the
curtains of the sky." The Connecticut boundary is not far away, and
beyond it, southward, are successive ranges of hills. The Housatonic
winds through productive valleys, with herds quietly grazing, and
tobacco and other crops growing. This is in the town of Mount
Washington, which was part of the great Livingston Manor that
stretched in front of the mountain over to the Hudson, and the first
settlers were Dutch, who came up from that valley. This region was the
scene of the close of Shays' Rebellion in 1787, the insurgents who had
convulsed western Massachusetts, and attacked and plundered
Stockbridge, being chased down here by the troops, and a considerable
number killed and wounded before they were dispersed.
TO SALISBURY AND BEYOND.
The southwestern corner of Massachusetts, projecting westward into New
York outside the Connecticut boundary, is known as Boston Corner. To
the southward, in the northwestern corner of Connecticut, is
Salisbury, where the Taghkanic range falls away into lower hills.
Beecher described this country as a constant succession of hills
swelling into mountains, and of mountains flowing down into hills.
This is a quiet region, formerly a producer of iron ores, and it was
early settled by the Dutch, who came over from the Hudson in 1720.
They were a timid race, however, fearing the rigors of climate, and,
coming thus to the edge of what looked like an Alpine land of
dreariness beyond, they would not venture farther into the forbidding
hills. The mountainous region to the north and east they inscribed on
their maps as a large white vacant space, which they coolly named
"Winterberg." The township has two noted ravines, solitary, rugged and
attractive, and both containing cascades. In one to the westward is
the celebrated Bash-Bish Falls, and the other to the northward is
Sage's Ravine, just beyond it being Norton's Falls. The Bash-Bish is
said to have got its name in imitation of running, falling waters. It
descends nearly five hundred feet in cataracts and rapids, the finest
cascades in the Berkshires, and then flows out westward to the Hudson.
The Housatonic, going southward through Salisbury, plunges down its
Great Falls over rocky ledges for sixty feet descent, making a
tremendous noise and a fine display. To the eastward of the Housatonic
Valley, at an elevation of eleven hundred feet, on a broad plateau, is
Litchfield, consisting chiefly of two broad, tree-shaded streets
crossing at right angles, the chief buildings fronting on the central
village Green. On the southwestern outskirts is Bantam Lake, the
largest in Connecticut, covering a little over a square mile of
surface. The most famous house in Litchfield, which has been moved,
however, from its original location, is unpretentious, the old-time
wooden mansion in which Rev. Lyman Beecher lived when pastor here,
from 1810 to 1826, and where was born the famous authoress, Harriet
Beecher, in 1812, who married Rev. Calvin E. Stowe, and the famous
preacher, Henry Ward Beecher, in 1813. In the Wolcott House at
Litchfield was born Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury, he and
his father both having been Connecticut Governors. To this house was
brought, in the Revolution, the leaden statue of King George III.,
which stood on the Bowling Green of New York, to be melted into
bullets. These were the favorite Indian hunting-grounds of Bantam
around the lake, and when Litchfield was first settled, about 1720,
the village was surrounded by a palisade, lest the savages should
return to their coveted region to take forcible possession. Litchfield
for a half-century after the Revolution had the most noted law school
in America. To the northward, at Wolcottville, where there are now
large factories, lived Captain John Brown, a noted Revolutionary
soldier, and here was born in 1800 his grandson, "Old John Brown of
Osawatomie."
Yet farther southward, but still among the hills, west of the
Housatonic Valley and near the New York boundary, is Danbury, famous
for its hat-factories, a town of about twenty thousand people. The
first hat-factory in America was opened at Danbury in 1780 by Zadoc
Benedict, three men making three hats a day. The factories now turn
out several thousand a day. In May, 1777, the Hessians attacked
Danbury and destroyed a large amount of the Revolutionary army
supplies, and it is recorded of the tragic event that Danbury was
"ankle-deep in pork-fat." On that memorable occasion it is said that
when the raiders were advancing up a hill a bold and reckless Yankee
farmer rode to its crest and shouted loudly, "Halt, the whole
universe; break off by kingdoms!" This demonstration alarmed the
Hessians, who thought a formidable force coming, and they halted to
defend themselves, deploying skirmishers and getting up their cannon
to the front. It was in an attack upon these raiders near Danbury that
General Wooster was mortally wounded, and the Danbury Cemetery
contains his monument. The constantly broadening Housatonic River
winds among the Connecticut hills in its steady course southeastward
to its confluence with the Naugatuck, a smaller stream coming down
through a pretty valley from the north, its Indian name meaning "one
tree," referring to an ancient tree on its banks which was a landmark
for the aborigines. The Naugatuck tumbles over a waterfall in the
Indian domain of Paugussett, furnishing power for the mills of
Ansonia, noted for its clocks. Near the confluence of the rivers is
the great Housatonic dam, six hundred feet long and twenty-three feet
high, constructed at a cost of $500,000 for the manufacturers of
Derby, who make pins, tacks, stockings, pianos and many other
articles. Commodore Isaac Hull, born in 1773, was the most
distinguished native of Derby, the commander of the frigate
"Constitution" when she captured the "Guerriere" in 1812. Then in
stately course the broad Housatonic flows southward, to finally empty
into Long Island Sound. The beauties of the Berkshire hills, so much
of which are made by the Housatonic's wayward course, have been the
theme of universal admiration, and their praises abound in our best
American literature. It was after a visit there that Robert G.
Ingersoll made his happy phrases in contrasting country and city life:
"It is no advantage to live in a great city, where poverty degrades
and failure brings despair. The fields are lovelier than paved
streets, and the great forests than walls of brick. Oaks and elms are
more poetic than steeples and chimneys. In the country is the idea of
home. There you see the rising and setting sun; you become acquainted
with the stars and clouds. The constellations are your friends. You
hear the rain on the roof and listen to the rhythmic sighing of the
winds. You are thrilled by the resurrection called Spring, touched and
saddened by Autumn, the grace and poetry of death. Every field is a
picture, a landscape; every landscape a poem; every flower a tender
thought; and every forest a fairy-land. In the country you preserve
your identity, your personality. There you are an aggregation of
atoms, but in the city you are only an atom of an aggregation."
The historian of the Berkshires, Clark W. Bryan of Great Barrington,
thus poetically describes the Berkshire hills and homes:
"Between where Hudson's waters flow
Adown from gathering streams,
And where the clear Connecticut,
In lengthened beauty gleams--
Where run bright rills, and stand high rocks,--
Where health and beauty comes,
And peace and happiness abides,
Rest Berkshire's Hills and Homes.
"The Hoosac winds its tortuous course,
The Housatonic sweeps
Through fields of living loveliness,
As on its course it keeps.
Old Saddleback stands proudly by,
Among Taconic's peaks,
And rugged mountain Monument
Of Indian legend speaks.
"Mount Washington with polished brow,
Green in the summer days,
Or white with winter's driving storms,
Or with autumn's flame ablaze,
Looms up across the southern sky,
In native beauty dressed--
The home of Bash-Bish, weird and old,
Anear the mountain's crest.
"And still each streamlet runs its course,
And still each mountain stands,
While Berkshire's sons and daughters roam
Through home and foreign lands;
But though they roam, or though they rest,
A thought spontaneous comes,
Of love and veneration for
Our Berkshire Hills and Homes."
THE ADIRONDACKS AND THEIR ATTENDANT LAKES.
XII.
THE ADIRONDACKS AND THEIR ATTENDANT LAKES.
The Great North Woods -- Mount Marcy or Tahawus -- Schroon Lake
-- Raquette River -- View from Mount Marcy -- Door of the
Country -- Lake George -- Horicon, the Silvery Water -- Isaac
Jogues -- Sir William Johnson -- Lake George Scenery and
Islands -- Sabbath Day Point -- Lake George Battles and
Massacres -- The Bloody Morning Scout -- Colonel Ephraim
Williams -- Baron Dieskau Defeated and Captured -- Fort William
Henry -- Fort Carillon -- General Montcalm -- Massacre at Fort
William Henry -- Alexandria -- Ticonderoga -- Abercrombie's
Expedition -- General Lord Howe -- Rogers' Slide -- Howe Killed
and Abercrombie Defeated -- Amherst's Expedition -- Carillon
Captured -- Fort Ticonderoga -- Conquest of Canada -- Ethan
Allen Captures Ticonderoga -- Lake Champlain -- Samuel de
Champlain Explores It -- Defeats the Iroquois -- Crown Point --
Port Henry -- Bulwagga Mountain and Bay -- Fort St. Frederic --
Westport -- Split Rock -- Rock Reggio -- Port Kent -- Vermont
-- The Green Mountains -- Bennington -- John Stark -- Rutland
-- Killington Peak -- Mount Mansfield -- Forehead, Nose and
Chin -- Camel's Hump -- Maple Sugar -- Burlington -- University
of Vermont -- Ethan Allen's Grave -- Winooski River --
Smuggler's Notch -- Montpelier -- Hessian Cannon -- St. Albans
-- Ausable Chasm -- Alice Falls -- Birmingham Falls -- Grand
Flume -- Bluff Point -- Lower Saranac River -- Plattsburg --
Fredenburgh's Ghost -- McDonough's Victory -- Chateaugay Forest
-- Clinton Prison -- Rouse's Point -- Richelieu River --
Chambly Rapids -- Entering the Adirondacks -- Raven Pass --
Bouquet River -- Elizabethtown -- Mount Hurricane -- Giant of
the Valley -- Ausable River -- Flats of Keene -- Mount Dix --
Noon Mark Mountain -- Ausable Lakes -- Adirondack Mountain
Reserve -- Mount Colvin -- Verplanck Colvin -- Long Pond
Mountain -- Pitch-Off Mountain -- Cascade Lakes -- Mount
Mclntyre -- Wallface -- Western Ausable River -- Plains of
Abraham -- North Elba -- Whiteface -- Old John Brown's Farm and
Grave -- Lake Placid -- Mirror Lake -- Eye of the Adirondacks
-- Upper Saranac River -- Harrietstown -- Lower Saranac Lake --
Ampersand -- Canoeing and Carrying -- Round Lake -- Upper
Saranac Lake -- Big Clear Pond -- St. Regis Mountain and River
-- St. Germain Carry -- St. Regis Lakes -- Paul Smith's --
Raquette River and Lake -- Camp Pine Knot -- Blue Mountain and
Lake -- Eagle Lake -- Fulton Lakes -- Forked Lakes -- Long Lake
-- Tupper Lakes -- Mountains, Woods and Waters -- The Forest
Hymn.
THE GREAT NORTH WOODS.
The Adirondack wilderness covers almost the whole of Northern New
York. This region is an elevated plateau of about fifteen thousand
square miles, crossed by mountain ranges. It stretches from Canada
down almost to the Mohawk Valley, and from Lake Champlain northwest to
the St. Lawrence, in rugged surface, the plateau from which its peaks
arise being elevated about two thousand feet above the sea. Five
nearly parallel mountain ranges cross it from southwest to northeast,
terminating in great promontories upon the shores of Lake Champlain.
The most westerly is the Clinton or Adirondack range, beginning at the
pass of Little Falls upon the Mohawk River and crossing the wilderness
to the bold Trembleau Point upon the lake at Port Kent. This range
contains the highest peaks, the loftiest of them, Mount Marcy or
Tahawus, rising fifty-three hundred and forty-five feet, while Mounts
McIntyre, Whiteface, Seward and several others nearby approximate five
thousand feet. A multitude of peaks of various heights are scattered
through the region, over five hundred being enumerated. They are all
wild and savage, and were covered by the primeval forests until the
ruthless wood-chopper began his destructive incursions. The stony
summits of the higher mountains rise above all vegetation, excepting
mosses and dwarf Alpine plants. The geological formation is mainly
granitic and other primary rocks. In the valleys are more than a
thousand beautiful lakes of varying sizes, generally at fifteen
hundred to two thousand feet elevation, Schroon Lake, the largest,
being the lowest, elevated eight hundred and seven feet, while the
highest is "The Tear of the Clouds," at forty-three hundred and twenty
feet elevation, one of the Hudson River sources. Some of these lakes
are quite large, while others cover only a few acres, and most of them
are lovely and romantic in everything but their prosaic names; and
their scenery, with the surrounding mountains and overspreading
forests, is unsurpassed. The labyrinth of lakes is connected by
intricate systems of rivulets which go plunging down myriads of
cascades, their outlets discharging into several well-known rivers,
the chief being the Hudson. The largest and finest stream within the
district is the Raquette River, rising in Raquette Lake and flowing
westward and northward to the St. Lawrence. Around it, in the olden
time, the Indians gathered on snowshoes to hunt the moose--the
snowshoe being the French Canadian's "raquette," and hence the name.
The Ausable and Saranac pass through romantic gorges and flow
northeastward to Lake Champlain. This "Great North Woods," as it was
called by our ancestors, is being so greatly despoiled of its forests,
that to preserve the water supply of the Hudson, as well as to protect
its scenic attractions, New York is making a State Park to include
four thousand square miles, of which nearly one-half is now secured,
having cost about $1,000,000. Railways are gradually extending into
the district; it is becoming dotted with summer hotels and
camping-grounds; and is one of the most popular American pleasure
resorts.
The highest peak, Mount Marcy, has a summit which is a bare rock of
about four hundred by one hundred feet, elevated more than a mile, and
its outlook gives a splendid map of the Adirondacks. All about are
mountains, though none are as high; McIntyre and Colden are close
companions, with the dark forests of the St. Lawrence region
stretching far behind them to the northwest. To the northward is the
beautiful oval-shaped Lake Placid, with Whiteface rising beyond it,
and nearby, to the westward, is the Indian "Big Eye," Mount Seward,
which, with the "Giant of the Valley," rises far above the attendant
peaks. Behind these, the hills to the northward gradually melt into
the level lands along the St. Lawrence, out of which faintly rises the
distant Mount Royal, back of Montreal. The Vermont Green Mountains
bound the eastern horizon, with the hazy outline of Mount Washington
traced against the sky through a depression in that range, thus
opening an almost deceptive view of the distant White Mountains. The
Catskills close the southern view. The vast wilderness spreads all
around this noble mountain, its white lakes gleaming, its dark forests
broken by a few clearings, and smokes arising here and there
disclosing the abiding-places of the summer sojourner. Off to the
northeast stretches the long glistening streak of Lake Champlain,
low-lying, the telescope disclosing the sails of the vessels like
specks upon its bosom, and the Vermont villages fringing the
farther shore. This narrow, elongated lake, filling the immense
trough-like valley between the Adirondacks and the Green Mountains of
Vermont, the Indians called as one of its names (for it had several)
Cania-de-ri-qua-rante, meaning "The door of the Country." Naming
everything from a prominent attribute, to their minds the chief use of
this long water way was as a door to let in the fierce Hurons from
Canada when they came south to make war upon the Mohawks or the
Mohicans. Many a brave warrior, both Indian and white, has gone
through that door to attack his foes, one way or the other. As far
back as tradition goes, the dusky savages were darting swiftly along
the lake in their canoes, bent upon plunder or revenge. Then came
Champlain, its white discoverer, to aid the Hurons with his arquebuse
in their forays upon the Mohawks and Iroquois. In the ante-Revolutionary
days many a French and Indian horde came along to massacre and destroy
the English and Dutch settlements in the Hudson Valley. Then the
current changed, and the English beat back their foes northward along
the lake. Again it changed, as Burgoyne came in triumph through that
door to meet defeat at Saratoga. Finally, in 1814, the last British
forces moved southward on the lake, but they, too, were beaten. Since
then this famous door has stood wide open, but only tourists and
traders are passing through, though zest is given the present
exploration by its warlike history of two centuries.
LAKE GEORGE.
Upon the southeastern border of the Adirondacks is Lake George, its
head or southern end being nine miles north of Glen's Falls on the
Hudson River. No American lake has had so many songs of praise; it is
a gem among the mountains, its picturesque grandeur giving it the
deserved title of the American Como. It reminds the Englishman of
Windermere and the Scot of charming Loch Katrine, for while it is
larger, it holds a place in our scenery akin to both those famous
lakes. Embowered amid high hills, a crystal mirror set in among
cliffs and forest-clad mountains, their wild and rugged features are
constantly reflected in its clear spring waters. Its scenery mingles
the gentle and picturesque with the bold and magnificent. George
Bancroft, referring to its warlike history, says: "Peacefully rest the
waters of Lake George between their ramparts of highlands. In their
pellucid depth the cliffs and the hills and the trees trace their
images, and the beautiful region speaks to the heart, teaching
affection for nature." It is long and narrow, having more the
character of a river than a lake, lying almost north and south, in a
deep trough among the mountains, its waters discharging from the north
end into Lake Champlain, and while thirty-six miles long, it is
nowhere more than two or three miles wide. Washing the eastern verges
of the Adirondacks, the bold ranges give it the rare beauties of
scenery always presented by a mountain lake. Its surface is two
hundred and forty-three feet above tide-water, and in some places it
is over four hundred feet deep, the basin in which it rests being
covered with a yellow sand, so that the bottom is visible through the
pellucid waters at great depth. It is dotted with romantic islands,
beautiful hill-slopes border the shores, and the background rises into
dark and bold mountains. This magnificent lake was Horicon, or the
"Silvery Water" of the Mohicans, a name which Cooper, the novelist,
vainly endeavored to revive for it. The Mohawks called it
Andiatarocte, or the "Place where the Lake Closes." The Hurons, as it
appeared much like an appendage to Lake Champlain, named it
Canaderioit, or the "Tail of the Lake." The first white man who saw it
was the young French Jesuit missionary, Isaac Jogues, who had been
captured on the St. Lawrence by a band of Mohawks, and was brought
through it a captive in 1642, and after horrible maltreatment escaped
to Albany. He went home to France, and in 1646 came out again,
determined to convert them. His canoe entered its quiet waters on his
beneficent mission on the eve of the festival of Corpus Christi, and
he named it Lac du Saint Sacrament. He went on to the Mohawk Valley
and ministered to them, but soon they murdered him. The French prized
its clear and sparkling waters so highly that they were sent to Canada
for baptismal uses. When Sir William Johnson came along more than a
century later and took possession for England, he brushed aside all
these romantic names, and in honor of his King George II., called it
Lake George, the name which remains.
A charming steamboat ride over the lake best discloses its delicious
scenery as one glides among the lovely islands, and through scenes
like a fairy-land, their brilliant prospects constantly changing. At
almost every hour from noon to eve, or in the gathering storm, the
islands of Lake George--which are said to equal in number the days of
the year--exhibit ever new phases. They may sleep under the
cloud-shadow, and then the sun brightly breaks over them; they present
a foreground of rough rocks or of pebble and shingle-covered beach, or
an Acadian bower of rustic beauty, while the landscape is filled with
the spreading waters and the distant-tinted hills. Tea Island, near
the head of the lake, is a picnic-ground; Sloop Island has its
tree-trunks looking like the spreading sails of a single-masted
vessel; Diamond Island yields beautiful quartz crystals. Near the
centre of the widest portion of the lake is Dome Island, richly
wooded, and resembling the noted "Ellen's Isle" of Loch Katrine. The
Sisters are diminutive islets, lonely in their isolation. The
beautiful Recluse Island has a picturesque villa, while all about it
rise high mountains. Green Island bears the Sagamore, and behind it
the encircling shores of Ganouskie Bay are lined with villas at
Bolton, which look out upon a grand archipelago. Green Island covers
seventy acres, and is a perfect gem of rich green surface. On the
shores and islands all about are numerous summer camping-places, a
favorite resort being the Shelving Falls, coming through the Shelving
Rock, an impressive semicircle of Palisades, behind which rises the
lake's greatest mountain, ever present in all its views, Black
Mountain, elevated twenty-nine hundred feet. Just beyond, the towering
hills thrust out on either hand contract the waters into the Narrows,
dotted with a whole fleet of little islands, the most picturesque
part of the lake, and here a brief fairy-like glimpse of the hamlet of
Dresden is got, nestling under these great mountains, down Bosom Bay.
Northward from the Narrows, a long projecting point of low and fertile
land stretches out on the western side, still retaining that air of
restful peace which in the eighteenth century secured it the name of
Sabbath Day Point. Farther on, and near the outlet, Rogers' Slide is
on one side and Anthony's Nose on the other, these bold cliffs
contracting the lake into a second Narrows. Beyond these are lower and
less interesting shores, and finally, at the foot, its waters are
discharged through the winding Ticonderoga Creek into Lake Champlain.
LAKE GEORGE BATTLES AND MASSACRES.
The historical associations of Lake George are of the deepest
interest, for it was the route between the colonial frontier and Lake
Champlain, and the scene of great military movements and savage
combats. For over a century this attractive region was the sojourning
place of religious devotees coming down from Canada to convert or
conquer the heathen Iroquois, or of hostile expeditions moving both
north and south--Indians, French, Dutch, English--all passing over its
lovely waters; and it was the scene of two of the most horrid
massacres of the colonial wars. Whenever there was war between France
and England this lake saw fierce conflicts, the red men taking part
with the whites on both sides. In 1755 Sir William Johnson's
expedition started northward from the Hudson to capture Crown Point on
Lake Champlain, advancing from Glen's Falls to Lake George, over the
route still taken. Colonel Ephraim Williams of Massachusetts commanded
part of this expedition, and was ambushed by the French and Hurons
near the lake, in what was called the "Bloody Morning Scout." Upon the
road still exist grim memorials of the ambush and massacre in the
"Bloody Pond" and "Williams' Rock." He had twelve hundred troops and
two hundred Mohawk Indians, and both Williams and the white-haired
Mohawk chief, Hendrick, were slain, with hundreds of their followers,
and the bodies of the dead were thrown into the pond. When the brave
Williams started on this sad expedition he had a presentiment of his
fate and made his will at Albany, giving his estate to support a free
school, and from this bequest was founded the well-known Williams
College, at Williamstown, in the Berkshire hills of western
Massachusetts. A monument on the hillside, resting upon "Williams'
Rock," was erected in 1854 by the College Alumni, to mark the place of
his death, while deep down in the glen is the sequestered pond which,
tradition says, had a bloody hue for many years.
After the surprise and massacre, Johnson's main forces, which had been
at the head of Lake George and heard the firings came up and engaged
the French, defeating them with great slaughter, wounding and
capturing Baron Dieskau, their commander, who was badly maltreated
until Johnson, learning who he was, sent for surgeons, took him into
his own tent, and, although wounded himself, had Dieskau's wounds
dressed first. The Mohawks, furious at the massacre and loss of their
old chief, Hendrick, wanted to kill Dieskau, and a number of them,
going into the tent, had a long and angry dispute in their own
language with Johnson, after which they sullenly left. Dieskau asked
what they wanted. "What do they want!" returned Johnson. "To burn you,
by God, eat you, and smoke you in their pipes, in revenge for three or
four of their chiefs that were killed. But never fear; you shall be
safe with me, or else they shall kill us both." A captain and fifty
men were detailed to guard Dieskau, but next morning a lone Indian,
who had been loitering about the tent, slipped in and, drawing a sword
concealed under a sort of cloak he wore, tried to stab the disabled
prisoner. He was seized in time, however, to prevent the murder. The
distinguished captive, as soon as his wounds permitted, was carried on
a litter over to the Hudson, and sent thence to Albany and New York.
He was profuse in his expressions of gratitude, and remarked of the
provincial soldiers that in the morning they fought like good boys,
about noon like men, and in the afternoon like devils. He returned to
Europe in 1757, but he never recovered from his wounds and died a few
years later. Johnson after the battle built a strong fort at the head
of Lake George to hold his position, while the straggling French and
Indians, who had retired to the foot of the lake, entrenched
themselves at Ticonderoga. Thus was built the famous Fort William
Henry by the English, named in honor of the Duke of Cumberland,
brother of King George II., the hero of Culloden, while the French
named their entrenched camp at Ticonderoga Fort Carillon, or the
"Chime of Bells," in allusion to the music of the waterfalls in the
outlet stream flowing beside it between the lakes.
Bitter enemies thus holding either end of Lake George, it became a
constant battleground. In 1757, after numerous skirmishes, a
considerable British and Colonial force was collected at Forts Edward
and William Henry, intended to attack Carillon and Crown Point and
drive the French down Lake Champlain. General Montcalm then commanded
the French, and learning what was going on, and that the main British
force was at Fort Edward, he swiftly traversed the lake with a large
army and cut off and besieged Fort William Henry, garrisoned by
twenty-five hundred men. The commander at Fort Edward was afraid to
send reinforcements, and after a few days the British garrison, their
guns dismounted and their works almost destroyed, were forced to
capitulate. No sooner had they laid down their arms and marched out
of the fort and an adjacent entrenched camp, than the Indian allies of
the French, the fierce Hurons, fell upon them, plundering
indiscriminately and murdering all they could reach, there being
fifteen hundred killed or carried into captivity, and over a hundred
women slain, with the worst barbarities of the savage. Montcalm did
his best to restrain them, but was powerless. The fort was an
irregular bastioned square, formed by gravel embankments, surmounted
by a rampart of heavy logs laid in tiers, the interstices filled with
earth, and it was built almost at the edge of the lake, the site being
now occupied by a hotel. The French spent several days demolishing it.
The barracks were torn down and the huge logs of the rampart thrown
into a heap. The dead bodies filling the casemates were added to the
mass, which was set fire, and the mighty funeral pyre blazed all
night. Then the French sailed away on the lake, and Parkman says "no
living thing was left but the wolves that gathered from the mountains
to feast upon the dead." When the English on the subsequent day sent a
scouting party from Fort Edward they found a horrible scene; the fires
were still burning, and the smoke and stench were suffocating, the
half-consumed corpses broiling upon the embers. The fort had mounted
nineteen cannon and a few mortars, a train of artillery which Johnson
had highly prized. The French carried these guns off with them to
Carillon, and they afterwards had a chequered history. The English
subsequently retook them at Carillon, and changed the name of that
fort to Ticonderoga. At the dawn of the Revolution, Ethan Allen and
his Vermonters surprised Ticonderoga and got them. Then the guns were
drawn on sledges to Boston, and did notable service in the American
siege and capture of that city, afterwards going into many engagements
with Washington's army.
ATTACKING CARILLON.
The Lake George outlet stream, which the French called Carillon, from
its waterfalls, was known by the Indians as Ticonderoga, or "the
sounding waters." It winds through a ridge about four miles wide
between the lakes, is pretty but turbulent, and falls down two series
of cascades, giving music and water-power to the paper and other mills
at the villages of Alexandria and Ticonderoga, the descent being two
hundred and thirty feet. The upper cascade at Alexandria goes down
rapids descending two hundred feet in a mile, and the lower cascade is
a perpendicular fall of thirty feet at Ticonderoga, this village being
called by its people "Ty," for short. Here stood the original French
Fort Carillon guarding the pass at the verge of Lake Champlain. After
the horrible massacre at Fort William Henry, the British colonists
determined upon revenge, and General James Abercrombie, who had been
made the Commander-in-Chief of all the British forces in North
America through political influence, gathered an army of nearly
sixteen thousand men at the head of the lake, while Montcalm was at
Carillon with barely one-fourth the number. Abercrombie, however, was
little more than the nominal British commander. General Wolfe
described him as a "heavy man;" and another soldier wrote that he was
"an aged gentleman, infirm in body and mind." The British Government
meant that the actual command should be in the hands of General Lord
Howe, who was in fact the real chief, described by Wolfe as "that
great man" and "the noblest Englishman that has appeared in my time,
and the best soldier in the British army;" while Pitt called him "a
character of ancient times; a complete model of military virtue." This
young nobleman, then in his thirty-fourth year, was Viscount George
Augustus Howe, in the Irish peerage, the oldest of the three famous
Howe brothers who took part in the American wars. The army, Parkman
says, "felt him from General to drummer-boy." In that army were also
two future famous men, Israel Putnam and John Stark.
They advanced northward on Lake George, July 5, 1758, in a grand
flotilla of over a thousand boats, with two floating castles, the
procession brilliant with rich uniforms and waving banners, and the
music from its many bands echoing from the enclosing hills. Fenimore
Cooper, in _Satanstoe_, gives a vivid description of this pageant.
Passing beyond the Narrows, Abercrombie, on a Sunday morning, landed
upon the fertile Sabbath Day Point to refresh his men before making
the attack, thus naming it. Among them was Major Rogers, the Ranger,
and in front could be seen the steep and rugged cliff of Rogers'
Slide, named after him, its face a comparatively smooth inclined plane
of naked rock, rising four hundred feet. The tale, as Rogers told it,
was, that the previous winter, fleeing from the Indians, he practiced
upon them a ruse, making them believe he had actually slid down this
rock to the frozen surface of the lake. He was on snowshoes, the
savages following, and ran out to the edge of the precipice, casting
down his knapsack and provision-bag. Then turning around and wearing
his snowshoes backward, he went to a neighboring ravine, and making
his way safely down, fled over the ice to the head of the lake. The
Indians saw the double set of shoe-marks in the snow, and concluded
two men had jumped down rather than be captured. They saw Rogers going
off over the ice, and believing he had safely slid down the face of
the cliff, regarded him as specially protected by the Great Spirit and
abandoned the pursuit. Thus has his name clung to the remarkable rock,
though he was said to be a great braggart, and there were people who
suggested that he ought to have been a leading member of the "Ananias
Club." Beyond the slide, at the foot of the lake, is the low-lying
Prisoners' Island, where the British kept the captives they took, and
nearby Howe's Landing, where the army landed to attack Fort Carillon.
There was then a dense forest covering almost all the surface between
the lakes, greatly obstructed by undergrowth, and Montcalm had
protected his position at Carillon with massive breastworks of logs,
eight or nine feet high, having in front masses of trees cut down with
their tops turned outwards, thus making it almost impossible for an
enemy to get through, the sharpened points of the broken branches
bristling like the quills of a porcupine. As the British troops
advanced in four columns, they got much mixed up in the forest and
undergrowth, and Howe, with Putnam and a force of rangers at the head
of the principal column, although they could not see ahead, suddenly
came upon the French, were challenged, and a hot skirmish followed, in
which Howe was shot through the breast and dropped dead. Then all was
confusion, but they beat this French advanced force and killed or
captured most of them. The loss of Howe, however, was irretrievable,
for Abercrombie, deprived of his advice, seemed unable to direct. The
fort was attacked after a fashion, but the troops floundered about in
the woods and the network of felled trees, suffered from a murderous
fire, and were beaten and hurled back discomfited to the shore of the
lake. A few days later the shattered army, having left nearly two
thousand dead and dying in front of Carillon, sailed back up the lake
again to Fort William Henry. Leadership had perished with Lord Howe.
His monument is in Westminster Abbey, London, having been erected to
his memory by the General Court of the Colony of Massachusetts, who
voted £250 for it. So proud was Montcalm of his victory that he caused
a great cross to be erected on the battlefield, with an inscription in
Latin composed by himself, which is thus translated:
"Soldier and chief and rampart's strength are naught;
Behold the conquering Cross! 'Tis God the triumph wrought."
TICONDEROGA.
Abercrombie was superseded after this disaster and went home, his
successor in command being Baron Jeffrey Amherst, who the next year
led another grand martial procession northward along the lake to
attack the French. His expedition had better success, for it resulted
in the conquest of Canada, and the treaty of peace which followed
closed the great "Seven Years' War" most triumphantly for England.
Fort Carillon, the name of which the English changed to Fort
Ticonderoga, stood upon a high rocky promontory, the termination of a
mountain range, the extremity, then called Sugar Loaf Hill, but since
named Mount Defiance, rising eight hundred and fifty feet above Lake
Champlain. It is a lofty peninsula, nearly a square mile in surface,
almost surrounded by water, with a swamp on the western side. When
Amherst advanced, the French garrison was meagre, for Wolfe was
threatening Quebec, and Montcalm had gone with reinforcements to repel
him; so that actually without a struggle they abandoned the fort,
after blowing up the magazine and burning the barracks. Amherst then
pushed on to conquer Canada, and the war ending, the British regarded
this and Crown Point, ten miles northward on Lake Champlain, as among
their most important posts, commanding the route to the new Dominion.
Both were greatly enlarged and strengthened, over $10,000,000 being
expended upon them, an enormous sum for that day, so that they became
the most elaborate British fortresses in the American colonies, the
citadel and field works of Ticonderoga including an area of several
square miles, having buildings and barracks and defensive
constructions anterior to the Revolution, covering almost the entire
surface. In 1763 France ceded Canada to England, and afterwards
Ticonderoga was neglected and partially decayed. When the Revolution
began in 1775 it was one of the earliest strongholds captured by the
Americans. Ethan Allen, with eighty men, crossed over Lake Champlain
from Vermont, surprised the small and unsuspecting garrison of fifty
men in the night, and Allen, penetrating to the bedside of the
astonished commandant, made his famous speech demanding surrender. "In
whose name?" asked the surprised officer. "In the name of the
great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." The Americans held it for
two years, when Burgoyne, on his southern march in 1777, besieged it,
and discovering that Mount Defiance, not then in the works, completely
commanded it, he dragged cannon up there and erected batteries, which
soon compelled the garrison to abandon it, and the British were in
possession until the war closed.
[Illustration: _Old Fort Ticonderoga_]
Ticonderoga has since fallen into utter decay, but parts of the ruins
are now preserved as a national memorial. A portion of wall and a
dilapidated gable enclosing a window still stand, and make a
picturesque ruin on top of a high slope rising from Lake Champlain,
with a background of timbered hills. These forests to the west and
south have grown during the nineteenth century, and are full of the
remains of the old redoubts and entrenchments. Well-defined dry
ditches are traced beyond the ramparts, with the barrack walls
surrounding the parade-ground, an old well, and also the sally-port on
the water side where Allen and his bold Green Mountain boys effected
their entrance. During many years after the fort fell into ruins, the
neighbors carried off its well-cut brick and stone work to build the
growing villages on Lake Champlain's shores. All the surroundings are
now eminently peaceful. The invaders, no longer warlike, are on
pleasure bent; the inhabitants make paper and textiles, saw lumber,
and also manufacture good lead-pencils from graphite found nearby.
Sheep contentedly browse amid the relics of the great fortress, and
vividly recall Browning's pastoral:
"Where the quiet-colored end of evening smiles
Miles and miles
On the solitary pasture where our sheep,
Half-asleep,
Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stray or stop
As they crop--
Was the site of a city, great and gay,
(So they say.)"
LAKE CHAMPLAIN.
The elongated and narrow water way of Lake Champlain stretches
northward one hundred and twenty-six miles, dividing New York from
Vermont, and its head, south of Ticonderoga, extending to Whitehall,
is so contracted between generally low and swampy shores, that it
there seems more like a river than a lake, in some places being
scarcely two hundred yards across. Northward, however, it broadens
into a much wider lake, the greatest unobstructed breadth being about
ten miles, opposite Burlington, Vermont, where it seems to expand
almost into a sea. The widest part of all is beyond this, being about
fifteen miles across, but with intervening islands. Over sixty islands
are scattered about this attractive lake, the contour of the shores
being very irregular, with numerous indenting bays. The northern
outlet is by the Richelieu River and the Chambly Rapids into the St.
Lawrence. Lake Champlain fills a long trough-like valley, bordered by
mountain ranges. When compared with Lake George, however, its shores
present a striking difference. There the declivities generally descend
abruptly to the water, but on Champlain the distant ranges, usually
far away on either side, have in front, bordering the water, wide
stretches of meadow and farm land and broad green slopes. Upon the
Vermont shore the prevailing aspect is a pastoral region, having the
Green Mountains rising in the distant eastern background. These are
the "Verts Monts," which the earliest French explorer of the St.
Lawrence, Jacques Cartier, saw from afar off, when the Indians of
Hochelaga, where Montreal now stands, took him to the top of their
mountain--"Mont Real"--to show him the glorious southern landscape.
These mountains gave Vermont its name, their highest peaks rising
behind Burlington, Mount Mansfield and the Camel's Hump. The New York
shore of the lake to the westward presents barren and mountainous
scenery, the terminations of the Adirondack ranges being occasionally
pushed out as bold promontories to the water's edge, while behind them
the higher peaks loom in dark grandeur against the horizon.
The adventurous French warrior and pioneer Samuel de Champlain was the
first European who sailed upon the waters of Champlain, and he gave
it his name. Anxious for exploration and adventure, in 1609 he joined
a band of Huron and Algonquin warriors on an expedition against their
enemies, the Mohawks and Iroquois in New York. After a grand war-dance
at Quebec they set out, ascending the St. Lawrence and Richelieu, and
on July 4th they entered the lake, Champlain having two French
companions, and the three being armed with arquebuses. As they
progressed towards the south, nearing the haunts of the Iroquois, they
travelled only at night, hiding by day in the forest. On July 29th,
while thus hiding, Champlain fell asleep and had a dream, wherein he
beheld the Iroquois drowning in the lake, and, trying to rescue them,
was told by his Huron companions that they were good for nothing, and
had better be left to their fate. When he awoke he told them of his
vision, and they were delighted. That very night they observed a
flotilla of Iroquois canoes, heavier and slower than their own, in
motion on the lake before them. Each saw the other, and mingled
war-cries pealed over the dark waters. The Iroquois, not wanting to
fight on the lake, landed and made a barricade of trees, which they
cut down. The Hurons lashed their canoes together and remained a
bowshot off-shore, shouting and dancing all night on their frail
vessels. It was agreed they should fight in the morning, and until
dawn the two parties abused each other, shouting taunts and defiance
"much," writes Champlain, "like the besiegers and besieged in a
beleaguered town," Champlain and his two companions, as day
approached, put on their light armor and lay in the bottom of their
canoes to keep hidden. Soon they all landed unopposed, and then the
Iroquois, some two hundred in number, came out of their barricade to
fight. The Hurons, who had surrounded Champlain, now opened their
ranks, and he passed to the front, levelled his arquebuse and
fired,--a chief fell dead, and soon another rolled among the bushes.
Then the Hurons gave a yell, which Champlain says would have drowned a
thunderclap, and the forest was filled with whizzing arrows. The
Iroquois for a moment replied lustily, and the other Frenchmen, who
were in the thicket on their flank, gave successive gunshots, which
they could not withstand, but soon broke and fled in terror. The
Hurons pursued them like hounds through the bushes, some were killed
and more were taken prisoners, and the arquebuse, till now unknown to
them, had won the victory. Then the victors, with their captives and
spoils, withdrew to the St. Lawrence; and Champlain had thus assisted
at the beginning of the awful series of conflicts which these lakes
witnessed during two centuries. This fight was in the neighborhood of
Crown Point, on Bulwagga Bay.
The latest of these conflicts on the lake was Commodore McDonough's
brilliant victory over the British fleet in 1814, since which time the
history of Lake Champlain has been peaceful. Despite this early
discovery and naming, however, it was not until long afterwards that
it was generally known by the present name. The Mohawks and Iroquois,
as already explained, called it the "Door of the Country." Among their
other bitter foes were the Abenaqui Indian nation of New England, who
called it Lake Potoubouque, or "the waters that lie between," that is,
between their country and the land of the Iroquois. For similar
reasons the French in Canada called it the "Iroquois Sea." A Dutch
officer having afterwards been drowned here, both the French and the
English for a long time styled it after him, "Corlaer's Lake." These
names, however, all long ago vanished, and since the eighteenth
century it has borne, undisputed, the name of Champlain, the great
Father of Canada.
CROWN POINT.
Progressing northward from Ticonderoga, the lake suddenly makes a
right-angled narrow bend to the westward, its channel compressed
between a broad, flat, low promontory coming up from the south, and
the protruding opposite shore that encircles and almost meets it.
These are the Champlain Narrows, the southern promontory being Crown
Point, and the opposite rock compressing the channel Chimney Point. A
broad bay opens behind Crown Point to the westward, and under the
shadow of Mount Bulwagga, the end of one of the long Adirondack
ranges, is the village of Port Henry, a producer of iron-ores, there
being furnaces here as well as on the shore south of Crown Point. Upon
the southern promontory, thus thrust out between the lake and Bulwagga
Bay, are the ruins of the famous fortress of Crown Point, which so
well guarded the narrow crooked channel and its approaches, and closed
the "door of the country" leading from Canada. Soon after Champlain's
time the French, who held all this region, built a stone fort on the
opposite point, and ambitiously planned a province, stretching from
the Connecticut River to Lake Ontario, of which this was to be the
capital. A town was started, with vineyards and gardens, and the
"Pointe de la Couronne," as it was called, became widely known. Early
in the eighteenth century the French built Fort St. Frederic here in
the form of a five-pointed star, with bastions at the angles, and its
ruins yet remain, showing traces of limestone walls, barracks, a
church, and tower. For thirty years this fort was the base of supplies
for forays on the colonial settlements, but it fell before Lord
Amherst's march northward in 1759. This English conquest translated
the "Pointe de la Couronne" into Crown Point, and then the British
Government constructed enormous works to control the lake passage.
There thus was built the great English fortress of Crown Point,
covering the highest parts of the peninsular promontory southwestward
from the old French fort. The limestone rocks were cut into deeply,
and ramparts raised twenty-five feet thick and high, the citadel being
a half-mile around. The ruins of these heavy walls, the ditches,
spacious parade and demolished barracks, give an idea of the costly
but obsolete military construction of that time. These extensive works
were blown up by an exploding powder magazine.
From the northeastern bastion of Crown Point a covered way leads to
the lake, and here a well was sunk ninety feet deep for a water
supply. Tradition told of vast treasures concealed by the French, and
so excited did the people become that a joint-stock company was formed
to search for them, clearing out the well and making excavations, but
nothing was found but some lead and iron. The ruins are in lonely
magnificence to-day, the red-thorn bushes brilliantly adorning them,
and the place is a popular picnic-ground. From the northern ramparts
there is a magnificent view of the distant Green Mountains on the
right hand, with their gentle fields and meadows stretching down to
the lake, and the rugged Adirondack foothills on the left, the distant
dark mountain ranges looming far away behind them, with the huge
broad-capped "Giant of the Valley" standing up prominently. Gazing at
their sombre contour, the reason can be readily divined why the
Indians called this vast weird region Cony-a-craga, or the "Dismal
Wilderness." The higher Adirondack summits, composed of the hardest
granite, are said by the geologists to be the oldest land on the
globe and the first showing itself above the universal waters. Some
distance above Port Henry is Westport Landing, the village standing in
the deep recesses of Northwest Bay, where the long ridge of Split Rock
Mountain, stretching towards the northeast, makes a high border for
the bay. This curious ridge is of historical interest. The outer
extremity is a cliff thirty feet high, covering about a half-acre, and
separated from the main ridge by a cleft twelve feet wide cut down
beneath the water. This cliff was the ancient Rock Reggio, named from
an Indian chief drowned there, and was for a long time the boundary
between the New York Iroquois and the Canadian Algonquins, whose lands
were held respectively by the English and the French. It is mentioned
in various old Colonial treaties as fixing the boundary between New
York and Canada, but during the Revolution the Americans passed far
beyond it, conquering and holding the land for seventy-seven miles
northward to the present national boundary.
THE GREEN MOUNTAINS.
Above, the lake gradually broadens, and at the widest part are seen,
on opposite sides, the village of Port Kent with its furnaces, and the
flourishing Vermont city of Burlington. The great Adirondack ridge of
Trembleau runs abruptly into the water as a sort of guardian to Port
Kent, and just above, Ausable River flows out through its sandy
lowlands into the lake. Vermont, which makes the entire eastern shore
of Champlain, is a region of rural pastoral joys with many herds and
marble ledges, a land of fat cattle and rich butter-firkins,
overlooked by mountains of gentle slope and softened outline.
Southward from Lake Champlain is Bennington, in a mountain-enclosed
valley, near which was fought in August, 1777, the famous battle in
which Colonel John Stark's Green Mountain boys cut off and signally
defeated Baum's detachment of Burgoyne's army. It is now a flourishing
manufacturing town. East of the head of Lake Champlain is Rutland, the
centre of the Vermont marble-quarrying industry and the site of the
great Howe Scale Works, a city of twelve thousand people.
Three-fourths of the marble produced in the United States comes from
this district of Vermont, and the Sutherland Falls Quarry at Proctor,
near Rutland, is said to be probably the largest quarry in the world.
These quarries are in the flanks of the Green Mountains which stretch
northward, making the watershed between the upper Connecticut River
and Lake Champlain. The Killington Peak, forty-two hundred and forty
feet high, is not far from Rutland.
Mansfield, the chief of the Green Mountains, is behind Burlington, and
rises forty-three hundred and sixty-four feet. Seen from across the
lake, it presents the upturned face of a recumbent giant, the southern
peak being the "Forehead," the middle one the "Nose," and the
northernmost and highest the "Chin." The latter, as seen against the
horizon, protrudes upwards in most positive fashion, rising three
hundred and forty feet higher than the "Nose," about a mile and a half
distant. This decisive-looking Chin is thus upraised about eight
hundred feet from the general contour of the mountain, while the Nose
is thrust upward four hundred and sixty feet, its nostril being seen
in an almost perpendicular wall of rock facing the north. Mansfield is
heavily timbered until near the summit, and a hotel is perched up
there at the base of the Nose, both Nose and Chin being composed of
rock ledges, which have been deeply scratched by boulders dragged over
them in the glacial period. These Green Mountains extend down from
Canada, and terminate in the Taghkanic and Hoosac ranges of Berkshire
in Massachusetts. They do not attain very high elevations, the Camel's
Hump, south of Mansfield, rising forty-one hundred and eighty-eight
feet. This was the "Leon Couchant" of the earliest French explorers,
and it bears a much better resemblance to a recumbent lion than to a
camel's back. The western slopes of these mountains are chiefly red
sandstone, while their body and eastern declivities are granite,
gneiss and similar rocks, and they are filled with valuable mineral
products, marbles, slates and iron-ores. Their slopes have fine
pastures of rich and nutritious grasses, and the green and rounded
summits present a striking contrast to the lofty, bare and often
jagged peaks of the White Mountains of New Hampshire beyond them.
There are cultivated lands on their slopes, at an elevation as high as
twenty-five hundred feet, and in and about them are the forests
producing the dear, delicious maple sugar:
"Down in the bush where the maple trees grow,
There's a soft, moist fall of the first sugar snow;
And the camp-fires gleam,
And the big kettles steam,
For the maple-sugar season has arrived, you know;
And these are the days when you'll find on tap
The sweetest of juices, which is pure maple sap."
BURLINGTON AND MONTPELIER.
Burlington, the chief Vermont city, is built on the sloping hillside
of a grandly curving bay, making a resemblance to Naples and its bay,
which has inspired a local poet to address the city as "Thou lovely
Naples of our midland sea." It has fifteen thousand people, and its
prosperity has been largely from the lumber trade, the logs coming
chiefly from Canadian and Adirondack forests. It is attractive, with
broad tree-embowered streets, the elm and maple growing in luxuriance,
while the hills run up behind the town into high summits. One of
these, the College Hill, rising nearly four hundred feet, has the fine
buildings of the University of Vermont, attended by six hundred
students, its tower giving a superb outlook over Lake Champlain, which
at sunset is one of the most gorgeous scenes ever looked upon.
Lafayette laid the corner-stone of this college on his American visit
in 1825, and his statue in sturdy bronze adorns the grounds. The
finest college building is the Billings Library, presented by
Frederick Billings, a projector, and once President of the Northern
Pacific Railway. All about these hills there are attractive villas and
estates, enjoying the view, of which President Dwight wrote, when
wandering over New England in search of the historic and picturesque,
that "splendor of landscape is the peculiar boast of Burlington." On
the northern verge of College Hill is the city's burial-place of the
olden time--Green Mount Cemetery. Here Ethan Allen is buried, a tall
Tuscan monument surmounted by a statue marking the spot, which is
enclosed by a curious fence made of cannon at the corners and muskets
with fixed bayonets. Allen lived at Burlington during his later life,
dying there in February, 1789.
College Hill falls off to the northward to a broad intervale, down
which winds the romantic Winooski or Onion River, flowing into Lake
Champlain a short distance above Burlington. It comes out of a gorge
in the Green Mountains, where it falls down pretty cascades and
rapids. This Winooski gorge was a dreaded defile in the early days of
the New England frontier, for by this route the fierce Hurons came
through those mountains from Champlain and Canada to make forays upon
the Massachusetts and New Hampshire border settlements. This gorge
passes between Mount Mansfield and the Camel's Hump. To the northward
is the noted "Smuggler's Notch" beyond the Chin of Mansfield, between
it and Mount Sterling beyond, the name having been given because in
the olden time contraband goods were brought through its gloomy
recesses from Canada into New England. An affluent of the Winooski,
the Waterbury River, comes out of this notch, a rapid stream. Upon the
upper Winooski is Montpelier, the Vermont State Capital, pleasantly
situated among the mountains near the centre of the commonwealth. Its
State House is a fine structure of light granite, surmounted by a
lofty dome. Massive Doric columns support its grand portico, under
which stands the statue, in Vermont marble, of Ethan Allen, by
Vermont's great sculptor, Larkin G. Mead. Here are also two old cannon
which Stark captured from the Hessians at Bennington. They were
afterwards used by the Americans with good effect throughout the
Revolution, and subsequently were part of the army equipment taken to
the western frontier. In the War of 1812 the British captured them in
Hull's surrender at Detroit, but they were recaptured in a subsequent
battle in Canada, and were sent as trophies to Washington. Congress
ultimately gave them to Vermont, and they were placed in the State
Capitol as relics of the battle of Bennington. Admiral George Dewey is
a native of Montpelier, born there December 26, 1837. St. Albans, a
great railroad centre and market for dairy products, is north of
Burlington, near Lake Champlain, a picturesque New England town, with
the elm-shaded central square. It is fourteen miles from the Canada
border, and an important customs station. Of it, Henry Ward Beecher
wrote that "St. Albans is a place in the midst of greater variety of
scenic beauty than any other I remember in America."
AUSABLE CHASM.
One of the chief Adirondack rivers flowing into Lake Champlain is the
Ausable. Its branches come out of the heart of the mountains, one
through the beautiful Keene Valley and the other through the
Wilmington Notch, and uniting at Ausable Forks, it flows along the
northwestern side of the long ridge terminating in Trembleau Point at
Port Kent, and enters the lake just above. The river escapes from the
mountains through the wonderful gorge of Ausable Chasm. It is an
active stream, bringing down vast amounts of sand, which wash through
this gorge and are spread over the flats north of Trembleau, where the
river flows out through two mouths. These prolific sand-bars, when
first seen by the French, caused them to name the stream Ausable, the
"river of sands." This renowned chasm, in its colossal magnificence
and bold rending of the hard sandstone strata, is one of the wonders
of America. A local poet has written on a little kiosk adjoining the
river chasm this rhythmic explanation of its origin:
"Nature one day had a spasm
With grand result--Ausable Chasm."
This splendid gorge, cut down in getting out of the highlands, is
carved in the hardest Potsdam sandstones. It is a profound, and in
most of its length a very narrow chasm, with almost vertical walls
from seventy to one hundred and fifty feet high, the torrent pouring
through the bottom being compressed within a width of eight to thirty
feet, and rushing with quick velocity. The chasm is about two miles
long, having several sharp bends, the stratified walls being built up
almost like artificial masonry. The sides are frequently cut by
lateral fissures, making remarkable formations, and the tops of the
enclosing crags are fringed with a dense growth of cedars. The river
of dark amber-colored water first comes out of the forest past
Keeseville, where mills avail of its water-power, and then pours over
the ledges of the Alice Falls, the finest in the Adirondacks. This
splendid cataract of forty feet descent is above the entrance to the
gorge, much of it being an almost sheer fall, having magnificent
foaming watery stairways down the ledges, bordering it with their
delicate lacework on either hand. The dark waters tumble in large
volume into an immense amphitheatre, which has been rounded out by the
torrent during past ages. Then bending sharply to the right, the
river goes down some rapids and over a mill-dam built just above the
chasm. The opening of this extraordinary rent in the earth is
startling. Suddenly the river pours over a short fall, and then down
another deep one strangely constructed, the line of the cataract being
almost in the line of the stream. These are the Birmingham Falls, down
which the Ausable plunges into the deep abyss, while high above stands
a picturesque stone mill whose wheels are turned by the waters, and
just below a light iron bridge carries a railway over the gorge.
It is difficult to describe the profound chasm opening below the
Birmingham Falls. It is a prodigious rent in the earth's crust, making
sudden right-angled turns. The visitor at first goes down a long
stairway and walks on the rocky floor adjoining the torrent, enormous
walls rising high above. There are various formations made by the
boiling waters, ovens, anvils, chairs, pulpits, punch-bowls and the
like, and, judging by their names, the Devil seems to be the owner of
most of them. The chasm turns sharply around the "Elbow," and the
waters rush through the narrow passage of "Hell Gate." There are many
caves and lateral fissures, all the masonry being hewn square, as in
fact the whole gorge is, such being the regularity of the
stratification and the accuracy of the angles and joints,--the
ponderous walls, reared on high, sometimes almost close together,
making the deep pass narrow and gloomy. The gorge finally contracts so
much there is no further room for walking, and a boat is taken for the
remainder of the journey down the "Grand Flume." The torrent carries
the boat along swiftly, guided by strong oarsmen both at bow and
stern, swinging quickly around the bends, shooting the rapids and
whirling through the eddies. After rushing along the "Flume,"
embracing the narrowest portions of the profound chasm, the boat
finally floats out into the "Pool," where the waters at length settle
into rest as they pass from the broken-down sandstone strata to the
flat land beyond, where the river flows through its two mouths into
the lake.
PLATTSBURG AND ITS NAVAL BATTLE.
Northward from Ausable River, Lake Champlain contains a number of
large islands. Valeur Island is near the New York shore, and in the
narrow channel separating them, in 1776, a desperate naval contest was
fought between Arnold and Carleton, resulting in the defeat of the
Americans. Beyond are the large islands of Grand Isle, South Hero and
North Hero. Standing in an admirable position on Bluff Point, a high
promontory on the western shore, is the great Hotel Champlain,
elevated two hundred feet above the lake. To the north the Saranac
River, coming from the southwest, flows out of the Adirondacks through
its red sandstone gorge into Cumberland Bay, and at its mouth is the
pleasant town of Plattsburg, having a population of seven thousand.
The broad peninsula of Cumberland Head, projecting far to the
southward into the lake, encloses the bay in front of the town.
Plattsburg's greatest fame comes from its battle and Commodore
McDonough's victory in 1814. The earliest settler was a British army
officer, one Count de Fredenburgh, who built a sawmill at a fall near
the mouth of the Saranac; but he was made way with early in the
Revolution, and many have been the startling tales since told of his
ghostly figure, in red coat and knee-breeches, stalking about the
ruins of the old mill at Fredenburgh Falls. After the war, New York
State confiscated the property and gave it to Zephaniah Platt and his
associates, who established the town, and in 1785 rebuilt the mill.
Plattsburg had become a place of so much importance that in the War of
1812-15 the English sent a large force from Canada for its capture.
They attacked it on a Sunday morning in September, 1814, Sir George
Prevost commanding the land forces and Commodore Downie a fleet of
sixteen vessels. General Macomb had a small American detachment
entrenched on the southern bank of the Saranac in hastily constructed
earthworks, some remains being yet visible. The naval contest,
however, decided the day, the superior British fleet being overcome by
the better American tactics. McDonough had but fourteen vessels,
anchored in a double line across the mouth of Cumberland Bay. As the
British fleet rounded Cumberland Head to make the attack, a cock that
was aboard McDonough's flag-ship, the "Saratoga," suddenly flew upon a
gun and crowed lustily. This was esteemed a good omen, and giving
three cheers, the Americans went to work with a will. After two hours'
conflict the British fleet was defeated and captured. Downie was
killed early in the action, and with fifteen other officers sleeps in
Plattsburg Cemetery. McDonough was crushed by a falling boom, and
afterwards was stunned by being struck with the flying head of one of
his officers, knocked off by a cannon-shot, but he was undaunted to
the end. Honors were heaped upon him, Congress giving him a gold
medal, and he was also presented with an estate upon Cumberland Head
overlooking the scene of his victory.
Plattsburg has the chief United States military post on the Canadian
border, there being usually a large force stationed at the extensive
barracks. It is also the terminus of railways coming from the
Adirondacks, originally built to fetch out the iron-ores, of which it
is an active market. One of these railways comes from Ausable Forks.
Another is the Chateaugay Railroad, which has a circuitous route
around the northern and eastern verges of the wilderness, from the
Chateaugay and Chazy Lakes, where are the ore beds in a dismal region.
Lyon Mountain, one of the chief ore producers, has its mines at two
thousand feet elevation above the lake. Stretching far away to the
northward is the immense Chateaugay forest and wilderness, extending
into Canada. This railroad passes Dannemora, where is located the
Clinton Prison, a New York State institution, at which it is said
"they always have a number of people of leisure, who pass their time
in meditation, making nails, cracking ore, and in other congenial
pursuits." The railroad route cuts into the red sandstone gorge of the
Saranac, and follows its valley out to Plattsburg. Some distance north
of Plattsburg, and at the Canadian boundary, is Rouse's Point, a
border customs station. This is the northern end of Lake Champlain,
which discharges through the Richelieu or Sorel River into the St.
Lawrence, the waters descending about one hundred feet, and mostly by
the Chambly Rapids. The Chambly Canal, which locks down this descent,
provides navigation facilities from Champlain to the St. Lawrence
waters.
ENTERING THE ADIRONDACKS.
From Westport on Lake Champlain is one of the favorite routes into the
Adirondacks. The name of this dark region originally came from the
Mohawks, who applied it in derision to the less fortunate savages that
inhabited the forbidding forests. The luxurious Mohawk, living in
fertile valleys growing plenty of corn, could see nothing for his
dusky enemy in this dismal wilderness to eat, excepting the dark
trees growing on its mountain sides, and therefore the Mohawk called
these people the Adirondacks, or "the bark and wood eaters." The
actual derivation of the word is thought to come from the Iroquois
root "atiron," meaning "to stretch along," referring to the mountain
chains. Starting from Westport, we penetrate the region by a steep
road into the Raven Pass, known as the "Gate of the Adirondacks,"
going through one of the ridges, among juniper bushes and aspen
poplars, and thus get to the pleasant valley beyond, where flows the
lovely Bouquet River. Here are a bunch of red-roofed cottages
surrounded by elms contrasting prettily with the green fields, with
boarding-houses and hotels interspersed, making up the village of
Elizabethtown, the county-seat of Essex, which is hereabout called
E-Town, for short. It spreads over the flat bottom of a fertile
valley, encompassed around by high mountains. Circling all over the
valley and yet concealed in deep gorges is the Bouquet River, which
flows out to Lake Champlain, near the Split Rock. To the westward
rises the sharp bare granite top of Mount Hurricane, nearly
thirty-eight hundred feet, and to the southwest the towering Giant of
the Valley, over forty-five hundred feet. Cobble Hill, rising two
thousand feet, closes up the western end of the main village street,
its ball-like top being a complete reproduction of a huge
cobble-stone. Out to the northward goes a wild mountain road, through
the Poke o' Moonshine Pass, leading to Ausable Chasm, twenty-three
miles away.
Travelling westward from E-Town, we mount the enclosing slope of the
Pleasant Valley, and through the gorge alongside Mount Hurricane, up
the canyon of the western branch of Bouquet River. Crossing the summit
among the granite rocks and forests, we then descend into another
long, trough-like valley, stretching as a broad intervale far away
both north and south, through which flows Ausable River. This
intervale includes the charming "Flats of Keene," the sparkling
Ausable waters meandering quietly over them beneath overhanging maples
and alders, quivering aspens and gracefully swaying elms, occasionally
dancing among the stones and shingle in some gentle rapid. Here are
farmhouses, with many villas, the great mountain ridges protecting the
valley from the wintry blasts. This intervale has in the eastern ridge
the Giant of the Valley, with Mount Dix alongside, rising nearly five
thousand feet, and to the southward, reared thirty-five hundred feet,
exactly at the meridian, is the graceful Noon Mark Mountain, which
casts the sun's noon shadow northward over the centre of the "Flats of
Keene." The river, coming from the south, flows out of the lower
Ausable Lake or the Long Pond, and dashes swiftly down its
boulder-covered bed. Its waters are gathered largely from the eastern
flanks of Mount Tahawus, and also from the galaxy of attendant
peaks--Dix, Noon Mark, Colvin, Boreas, the Gothics, and
others--grandly encircling the southern head of the attractive Keene
Valley. The Ausable River rises under the brow of Tahawus, and flowing
through the two long and narrow Ausable Lakes at two thousand feet
elevation, traverses the whole length of the Keene Valley northward,
to unite with its western branch at Ausable Forks, and thence goes
through the great chasm to Lake Champlain. The head of the Keene
Valley with the adjacent mountain slopes, extending through parts of
three counties and covering a tract of forty square miles, is the
"Adirondack Mountain Reserve." This reservation gives complete
protection to the fish and game, and also preserves the forests and
sources of the water supply. The Lower Ausable Lake is about two miles
long and the Upper Ausable Lake nearly the same length, there being
over a mile's distance between them. Some of the highest and most
romantic of the Adirondack peaks environ these lakes. The sharply-cut
summit of Mount Colvin rises forty-one hundred and fifty feet
alongside them. The Ausable Lakes are in the bottom of a deep cleft
between these great mountains, their sides rising almost sheer, two
thousand feet and more above them. The lake shores are steep and rocky
walls, reared apparently to the sky, the deep and contracted cleft
making the lakes look more like rivers, surmounted high up the rocks
by overhanging foliage, the trees diminutive in the distance. Of the
Upper Ausable Lake, Warner writes that "In the sweep of its wooded
shores, and the lovely contour of the lofty mountains that guard it,
this lake is probably the most charming in America."
ADIRONDACK ATTRACTIONS.
The western guardian peaks of the Keene Valley are the main range of
the Adirondacks, including Mount Marcy or Tahawus. Mount Colvin,
alongside the Ausable Lakes, was named in honor of Verplanck Colvin,
the New York surveyor and geologist, who devoted years of energy to
the survey of this wilderness, and perhaps knew it better than anyone
else. He was always in love with it, and thought that few really
understood it. He described it as "a peculiar region, for though the
geographical centre of the wilderness may be readily reached, in the
light canoe-like boats of the guides, by lakes and rivers which form a
labyrinth of passages for boats, the core, or rather cores, of this
wilderness extend on either hand from these broad avenues of water,
and in their interior spots remain to-day as untrodden by men and as
unknown and wild as when the Indian paddled his birchen boat upon
those streams and lakes. Amid these mountain solitudes are places
where, in all probability, the foot of man never trod; and here the
panther has his den among the rocks, and rears his savage kittens
undisturbed, save by the growl of bear and screech of lynx, or the
hoarse croak of the raven taking its share of the carcass of slain
deer." The tangled Adirondack forest may to some seem monotonous and
even dreary, but Mr. Street, the poet-writer of the region, thus
enthusiastically refers to it: "Select a spot; let the eye become a
little accustomed to the scene, and how the picturesque beauties, the
delicate minute charms, the small overlooked things, steal out like
lurking tints in an old picture. See that wreath of fern, graceful as
the garland of a Greek victor at the games; how it hides the dark,
crooked root, writhing snake-like from yon beech! Look at the beech's
instep steeped in moss, green as emerald, with other moss twining
round the silver-spotted trunk in garlands or in broad, thick, velvety
spots! Behold yonder stump, charred with the hunter's camp-fire, and
glistening black and satin-like in its cracked ebony! Mark yon mass of
creeping pine, mantling the black mould with furzy softness! View
those polished cohosh-berries, white as drops of pearl! See the purple
barberries and crimson clusters of the hopple, contrasting their vivid
hues!--and the massive logs peeled by decay--what gray, downy
smoothness! and the grasses in which they are weltering--how full of
beautiful motions and outlines!"
From the Keene Valley we climb up the gorge of a brisk little brook to
the westward, and passing through the notch between Long Pond Mountain
and the precipitous sides of the well-named Pitch-Off Mountain, come
to the pair of elongated deep and narrow ponds between them,--the
Cascade Lakes,--stretching nearly two miles. Huge boulders line their
banks with a wall of rough and ponderous masonry, entwined with the
roots of trees, and like the Ausable Lakes, they are another Alpine
formation, their surfaces being at twenty-one hundred feet elevation,
yet resting in the bottom of a tremendous chasm. An unique cascade,
falling in successive leaps for seven hundred and fifty feet down the
southern enclosing mountain wall, has given them the name--a delicate
white lace ribbon of foaming water, finally passing into the lower
lake. The grand dome of Mount McIntyre, in the main Adirondack range,
rises in majesty to an elevation of fifty-two hundred feet, a sentinel
beyond the western entrance to this remarkable pass. Formerly
iron-ores were found here, but iron-making has been abandoned for the
more profitable occupation of caring for the summer tourist. Beyond
these lakes the summit of the pass is crossed, and there is a farm or
two upon a broad plateau, at twenty-five hundred feet elevation, the
highest cultivated land in New York State. Comparatively little but
hay, however, can be raised, the seasons are so short and fickle. Deer
haunt this remote region, and their runways can be seen. Emerging from
the pass, with the little streams all running westward to the
Ausable's western branch, there is got a fine view of the main
Adirondack range, with the massive Mount McIntyre and the almost
perpendicular side of Wallface rising beyond, the deep notch of the
famous Indian Pass, cut down between them, showing plainly. Both peaks
tower grandly above a surrounding galaxy of bleak, dark mountains.
OLD JOHN BROWN OF OSAWATOMIE.
This broad flat valley of the Western Ausable, the stream winding
through it in a deeply-cut gorge, and surrounded on the south and west
by an amphitheatre of the highest Adirondack peaks, is the township of
North Elba in Essex county; and the valley and its fertile borders are
the "Plains of Abraham." It is a farming district, so well enclosed by
the mountains that the soil is fairly tillable. These plains gradually
slope northwestward to the banks of two of the most noted of the
Adirondack waters, Lake Placid and the Mirror Lake, with old Whiteface
Mountain for their guardian, "heaving high his forehead bare." Here
are the scattered buildings of the village of North Elba on the
plains, and the more modern and fashionable settlement beyond at the
lakes. To the southward is the great rounded top of Tahawus, the
highest Adirondack peak, displayed through an opening vista, and at
the northern border grandly stands Whiteface, the black sides abruptly
changing to white, where an avalanche years ago denuded the granite
cliffs near the top and swept down all the trees. Here at North Elba
was the home and farm of "Old John Brown of Osawatomie." He had been
given this homestead by Gerrit Smith, the great New York Abolitionist,
in 1849, and there had also been founded here a colony of refuge for
the negro slaves. It was then a remote and almost unknown place in the
wilderness. Brown settled in the colony and built his little log house
and barn near a huge boulder which stood a short distance from the
front door. Here he formed his plan for liberating the slaves, and
from here went to engage in the Kansas border wars of 1856. Returning,
for three years he brooded on plans to liberate the negroes, and after
further conflicts in Kansas projected the expedition into Virginia for
the capture of Harper's Ferry in October, 1859. He declared his object
to be to free all the slaves, and that he acted "by the authority of
God Almighty." After his capture and conviction he discouraged efforts
at liberation, saying, "I am of more use to the cause dead than
living." After his death his body was brought up here to his home in
the wilderness, for he had said, "When I die, bury me by the big rock,
where I love to sit and read the word of God." Here he was buried on a
bitterly cold day in December, 1859, a few sorrowing friends
conducting the services and covering up his body in the frozen ground.
The old gravestone of his grandfather was brought from New England and
put at the head of the grave, but it was soon so chipped off and
broken by relic-hunters, it had to be enclosed in a case for
preservation. Behind the grave rises the huge boulder on which has
been carved, in large letters, "John Brown, 1859." The old gravestone
is full of names both front and back, containing the record of his own
death, and that of three sons, two losing their lives at Harper's
Ferry and one in Kansas. The record of his life, graven on the stone,
is: "John Brown, born May 9, 1800, was executed at Charleston, Va.,
Dec. 2, 1859." It is here that
"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
And his soul goes marching on."
Forty years afterwards, in 1899, the remains of seven of his
companions in the Harper's Ferry raid were removed here and interred
beside him. This region no longer knows Brown's kindred, for all have
disappeared. Yet in the world's mutations, nothing could be more
strange than that this remote wilderness, originally selected as a
refuge and hiding-place for runaway slaves, should have become one of
the most fashionable and popular health resorts in America. The farm
and graves are now kept by New York State as a public park.
LAKE PLACID TO PAUL SMITH'S.
Lake Placid, nestling at the base of old Whiteface and elevated
eighteen hundred and sixty feet above the sea, is often called the
"Eye of the Adirondacks." Its mountain environment has made it almost
a rectangle, four miles long and two miles wide. Down its centre,
arranged in a row, are three beautiful islands, named respectively the
Hawk, Moose and Buck, two being large and high and the third smaller.
These divide it into alternating spaces of land and water much like a
chess-board. To the eastward is the pretty Mirror Lake, about three
miles in circuit. Both lakes have high wooded shores, and around them
are gathered the hotels, cottages and camps of a large summer
settlement. Surrounded by a grander galaxy of finer and higher
mountains than any other lakes of this region, here is truly the "Eye"
that views these dark Adirondacks in all their glory. These mountains
are all sombre, and some almost inky black; many are hazy in the
distance. To the northeast the Wilmington Pass, alongside Whiteface,
lets out the western branch of Ausable; to the southward, the Indian
Pass opening between McIntyre and Wallface is a source of the Hudson;
to the westward, on the spurs of lower ranges, are the forests
separating these lakes from the Saranacs. There are more than a
hundred peaks around, of varying heights and features, among them the
greatest of the Adirondacks. Embosomed within this wonderful
amphitheatre is the glassy-surfaced lake, protected from the winds and
storms, which is so attractive and so peaceful that it fully deserves
its name, Lake Placid.
Crossing again to the westward through the forests and over the
ridges, we come into the valley of the Saranac, with its lakes, and
the ancient village of Harrietstown under the long ridge of Ampersand
Mountain. Here on the Lower Saranac Lake is another summer settlement
of villas, hotels and camps. Behind the mountain there is a little
lake out of which flows a stream so crooked and twisted into and out
of itself, turning around sweeping circles without accomplishing much
progress, that its discoverers could not liken it to anything more
appropriate than to the eccentric supernumerary of the alphabet, the
"&." Thus the name of the "Ampersand" of the old spelling-books was
applied first to the stream, and then to the lake and mountain, the
latter being the guardian of the many lakes of this region. The Lower
Saranac Lake is at fifteen hundred and forty feet elevation, and the
Ampersand Mountain rises a thousand feet above it. A pretty church in
the village is appropriately named for St. Luke the Physician, and
here is located the Adirondack Sanitarium, this district being a
favorite refuge for consumptives. The Chateaugay railroad comes in
here, but the district beyond to the south and west has neither
railroads nor wagon roads. It is such a labyrinth of lakes and water
courses it can only be traversed in boats.
The whole western part of the Adirondacks is an elevated tableland,
containing many hills and peaks, but saturated by water ways.
Therefore "canoeing and carrying" is the method of transportation.
The Lower Saranac Lake is five miles long, and beyond it is Round
Lake, over two miles in diameter, beyond that being the Upper Saranac
Lake, nearly eight miles long and dotted with islands. There are
portages between them where the canoes have to be carried. The outlet
of the Upper Saranac is a magnificent cataract and rapid, descending
thirty-five feet in a distance of about one hundred yards. From the
Upper Saranac Lake other portages, or "carrys," as they are called,
lead over to the Blue Mountain region, the Raquette River and the
Tupper Lakes to the westward. The Adirondack ranges here are lower,
and the forests get denser, but all about are dotted the summer
settlements, some of them displaying most elaborate construction.
Every place has its boat-house and canoe-rack, and boats are moving in
all directions. At the head of the Upper Saranac is St. Regis
Mountain, and a long "carry" of about four miles through the forest
goes over to the Big Clear Pond, the head of the Saranac system of
waters. Crossing this lake, yet another "carry" takes us over the
watershed. This is a famous portage in the liquid district, the "St.
Germain carry" of over a mile between the Saranac headwaters and the
sources of St. Regis River, flowing out westward and then northward to
the St. Lawrence. It leads to the series of St. Regis Lakes, and
finally on the bank of the Lower St. Regis to the great hotel of the
woods--Paul Smith's--with many camps surrounding the shores of the
lake. Apollus Smith, a shrewd Yankee, came here many years ago, when
the locality was an unbroken wilderness, and built a small log house
in the forest as an abiding-place for the hunter and angler. It was
repeatedly enlarged, and with it the domain, now covering several
thousand acres, until the hostelrie has become an unique mixture of
the backwoods with modern fashion, and is everywhere known as the
typical house of the Adirondack region. Upon the hill behind the hotel
is the attractive little church of "St. John in the Wilderness,"
appropriately built of logs hewn in the surrounding forest.
ADIRONDACK LAKES.
To the westward is the water system of the Raquette River, leading to
the St. Lawrence; this stream, the chief one in the district, flowing
out of Raquette Lake. This lake is irregularly shaped, about ten miles
long, and surrounded by low hills, its elevation being nearly eighteen
hundred feet. The dense forests that are adjacent teem with game, and
its hotels and private camps are among the best in the region, "Camp
Pine Knot" being especially famous as the most elaborate and
attractive of its kind in America. Blue Mountain rises to the eastward
nearly thirty-eight hundred feet, and at its southwestern base is the
Blue Mountain Lake, having on its southern edge the small Eagle Lake,
where lived in a solitary house called the Eagle's Nest the noted "Ned
Buntline," the author. To the southwest of Raquette are the chain of
eight Fulton Lakes. North of Raquette are the Forked Lakes, and
northeast of it, following down the Raquette River, Long Lake, which
is fourteen miles long and barely a mile wide in the broadest part,
having Mount Seward rising at its northern end. To the northwest,
still following down the Raquette, are the Tupper Lakes. These are a
few of the larger lakes in this labyrinth of water courses, there
being hundreds of smaller ones; and, as the forest and water ways
extend northwest, the land gradually falls away towards the great
plain adjoining the St. Lawrence. These regions, however, are remote
from ordinary travel, and the western Adirondack forests are rarely
penetrated by visitors excepting in search of sport.
This wonderful region has only during recent years attracted general
public attention as a great sanitarium and summer resort, but its
popularity constantly increases. Its dark and forbidding mountains
have become additionally attractive as they are better known, probably
for the reason, as John Ruskin tells us, that "Mountains are the
beginning and the end of all natural scenery." Its universal woods and
waters have a resistless charm. As one wanders through the devious
pathways, or glides over the glassy surface of one of its myriad
lakes, the vivid coloring and richness of the plant life recall
Thomson, in the _Seasons_:
"Who can paint
Like Nature? Can imagination boast
Amid its gay creation hues like her's?
Or can it mix them with that matchless skill,
And lose them in each other, as appears
In every bud that blows?"
But after all, the great Adirondack forests, vast and trackless, much
of them in their primitive wildness, are to the visitor possibly the
grandest of the charms of this weird region. The "Great North Woods"
still exist as the primeval forest on many square miles of these broad
mountains and deep valleys, recalling in their solitude and grandeur
William Cullen Bryant's _Forest Hymn_:
"The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned
To hew the shaft and lay the architrave,
And spread the roof above them--ere he framed
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood,
Amidst the cool and silence he knelt down
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And supplication."
CROSSING THE EMPIRE STATE.
XIII.
CROSSING THE EMPIRE STATE.
The Mohawk Valley -- Cohoes and its Falls -- Occuna's Death --
Erie Canal -- De Witt Clinton -- New York Central Railroad --
Mohawk and Hudson Railroad -- Schenectady -- Union College --
Amsterdam -- Fort Johnson -- Sir William Johnson -- Johnstown
-- The Iroquois or Six Nations -- Senecas -- Red Jacket --
Cayugas -- Onondagas -- Oneidas -- Tuscaroras -- Mohawks --
Joseph Brant -- The Noses -- Little Falls -- Herkimer -- Utica
-- Classic Names -- Rome -- Trenton Falls -- Lake Ontario --
The Lake Ridge -- Black River -- Cazenovia Lake -- Oneida Lake
-- Oneida Community -- Oswego River -- Oswego -- Onondaga Lake
-- Syracuse -- Salt Making -- Syracuse University -- Otisco
Lake -- Skaneateles Lake -- Owasco Lake -- Auburn -- William H.
Seward -- Cayuga Lake -- Ithaca -- Fall Creek -- Cascadilla
Creek -- Taghanic Falls -- Cornell University -- Ezra Cornell
-- John McGraw -- Seneca Lake -- Havana Glen -- Watkins Glen --
Geneva -- Hobart College -- Seneca River -- Keuka Lake -- Penn
Yan -- Hammondsport -- Canandaigua Lake and Town -- Canisteo
River -- Hornellsville -- Painted Post -- Corning -- Chemung
River -- Elmira -- Genesee River -- Portage Falls -- Genesee
Level -- Mount Morris -- Council House of Cascadea -- Geneseo
-- Rochester and its Falls -- Sam Patch -- Medina Sandstones --
Lockport -- Chautauqua Lake -- Chautauqua Assembly --
Pennsylvania Triangle -- Erie -- Perry's Victory -- Captain
Gridley's Grave -- Dunkirk -- Buffalo -- Sieur de la Salle and
the Griffin -- Grain Elevators -- Prospect Park -- Fort Porter
-- Fort Erie -- Niagara River -- Grand Island -- Niagara Falls
-- Niagara Rapids -- Father Hennepin's Description -- Charles
Dickens -- Professor Tyndall -- Anthony Trollope -- Geological
Formation -- Appearance of Niagara -- Goat Island -- Luna
Island -- Cave of the Winds -- Terrapin Rocks -- Three Sisters
Islands -- The Horseshoe -- Condemned Ship Michigan -- Lower
Rapids -- Whirlpool -- Niagara Electric Power -- Massacre of
Devil's Hole -- Battles of Queenston Heights, Chippewa and
Lundy's Lane.
THE FALLS AT COHOES.
The valley of the Mohawk River provides one of the best routes for
crossing the Empire State, from the Hudson over to Lake Erie. Within
sight of the Hudson, the Mohawk pours down its noble cataract at
Cohoes. This is a waterfall of nearly a thousand feet width, the
descent being seventy-eight feet. The banks on either side are quite
high, with foliage crowning their summits, and between is a
perpendicular wall of dark-brown rocks making the cataract, having a
sort of diagonal stratification that breaks the sombre face into
rifts. In a freshet this is a wonderful fall, the swollen stream
becoming a dark amber-colored torrent with adornments of foam, making
a small Niagara. The river is dammed about a mile above, so that at
times almost the whole current is drawn off to turn the mill-wheels of
Cohoes, making paper and manufacturing much wool and cotton, one of
its leading establishments being the "Harmony Knitting Mills." In
digging for the foundations of its great buildings alongside the
river, this corporation several years ago exhumed one of the most
perfect skeletons of a mastodon now existing, which is in the State
Museum at Albany. Cohoes has about twenty-five thousand population,
and its name comes from the Iroquois word Coh-hoes, meaning a "canoe
falling." A brisk rapid runs above the falls, and a touching Indian
legend tells how the rapid and fall were named. Occuna was a young
Seneca warrior (one of the Iroquois tribes), and with his affianced
was carelessly paddling in a canoe at the head of the rapid, when
suddenly the current drew them down towards the cataract. Escape being
impossible, they began the melancholy death-song in responsive chants,
and prepared to meet the Great Spirit. Occuna began: "Daughter of a
mighty warrior; the Great Manitou calls me hence; he bids me hasten
into his presence; I hear his voice in the stream; I see his spirit in
the moving of the waters; the light of his eyes danceth upon the swift
rapids." The maiden responded, "Art thou not thyself a great warrior,
O Occuna? Hath not thy tomahawk been often bathed in the red blood of
thine enemies? Hath the fleet deer ever escaped thy arrow, or the
beaver eluded thy chase? Why, then, shouldst thou fear to go into the
presence of the Great Manitou?" Then said Occuna, "Manitou regardeth
the brave, he respecteth the prayer of the mighty! When I selected
thee from the daughters of thy mother I promised to live and die with
thee. The Thunderer hath called us together. Welcome, O shade of
Oriska, invincible chief of the Senecas. Lo, a warrior, and the
daughter of a warrior, come to join thee in the feast of the blessed!"
The canoe went over the fall; Occuna was dashed in pieces among the
rocks, but the maiden lived to tell the story. The Indians say that
Occuna was "raised high above the regions of the moon, from whence he
views with joy the prosperous hunting of the warriors; he gives
pleasant dreams to his friends, and terrifies their enemies with
dreadful omens." Whenever the tribe passed the fatal cataract they
solemnly commemorated Occuna's death.
THE ERIE CANAL.
Just above Cohoes, the Erie Canal crosses the Mohawk upon a stately
aqueduct, twelve hundred feet long, and it then descends through the
town by an elaborate series of eighteen locks to the Hudson River
level. This great water way made the prosperity of New York City, and
is the monument of the sagacity and foresight of De Witt Clinton,
Governor of New York, who, despite all obstacles, kept advocating and
pushing the work until its completion. The construction began in 1817,
and it was opened for business in 1825. The first barge going through
had a royal progress from Buffalo, arriving at Albany at three minutes
before eleven o'clock on the morning of October 26, 1825. There being
no telegraphs, a swift method was devised for announcing her arrival,
both back to Buffalo and down the Hudson River to New York. Cannon
placed within hearing of each other, at intervals of eight or ten
miles, were successively fired, announcing it in both cities, the
signal being returned in the same way. By this series of cannon-shots
the report went down to New York and came back to Albany in
fifty-eight minutes. When the first barges from Buffalo reached New
York they were escorted through the harbor by a grand marine
procession, which went to the ocean at Sandy Hook, where Governor
Clinton poured in a keg of water brought from Lake Erie. The original
Erie Canal cost $7,500,000, but it was afterwards enlarged and
deepened, and further enlargements are still being made. It is
fifty-six feet wide at the bottom and seventy feet at the surface,
with seven feet depth of water. The barges are stoutly built and carry
cargoes of seven to nine thousand bushels of grain. The canal is three
hundred and fifty-five miles long, and gradually descends from Lake
Erie five hundred and sixty-eight feet to the tidal level of the
Hudson River, there being seventy-two locks passed in making the
journey. This work, with its feeders and connections with the St.
Lawrence River by the Champlain and Oswego Canals and the
enlargements, has cost New York $98,000,000, and the maintenance costs
$1,000,000 a year. It carries a tonnage approximating four millions
annually, and is now free of tolls. Usually it carries half the grain
coming to New York City. There are various projects for its further
enlargement to twelve feet depth to accommodate larger boats, and its
future usefulness is a theme of wide discussion. Its route across New
York State is naturally the one of easiest gradient, passing from
Buffalo over the flat plain of Western New York, descending to the
lower level of the Genesee Valley, then crossing the plain immediately
north of the central lake district of New York, and finally by the
Mohawk Valley, getting an easy passage through the narrow mountain
gorge at Little Falls, and thence alongside that stream to the Hudson.
Closely accompanying the canal, the great Vanderbilt line, the New
York Central Railway, crosses New York from Albany to Buffalo. It runs
for seventeen miles, from Albany to Schenectady, and then follows up
the Mohawk Valley. This seventeen miles of road is probably the oldest
steam railroad in the United States--the Mohawk and Hudson Company,
chartered in April, 1826. The commissioners organizing it met for the
purpose at John Jacob Astor's office in New York City, July 29, 1826,
and sent an agent over to England to inquire into its feasibility, and
he came back with the plans, and was put in charge at $1500 salary.
This was Peter Fleming, the first manager. The original power was by
horses, and afterwards steam was used in daytime only, horses
continuing the night work, it not being considered safe to use steam
after dark. One car, looking much like an old-fashioned stage-coach,
made a train. There were fourteen miles of level line, the remainder
being inclined planes, where horses did the most work. When the car
approached the station the agent met it, blocking the wheels with a
wedge, which was removed when the car started again. As business
increased, more cars were added to the trains, and then a guard was
put on top of the first car back of the locomotive, to watch the train
and see that everything moved right. He frequently notified the
engineer to stop when a car was seen bobbing about sufficiently to
indicate that it was off the track. This primitive road was the
beginning of the New York Central Railroad, which was gradually
extended westward.
ASCENDING THE MOHAWK.
Schenectady on the Mohawk is a quaint old town of Dutch foundation,
now devoted considerably to hops and butter, and largely to the trade
in brooms. The Indians called it Skaunoghtada, or "the village seen
across the plain," and hence the name. It was an early outpost of the
Patroon at Albany, who sent Arent Van Corlaer to build a fort and
trade in furs with the Indians in 1661. There were two horrible
massacres here in the colonial wars. This comfortable city spreads
broadly on the southern bank of the river and has over twenty thousand
people. It is the seat of Union College, the buildings, upon a height
overlooking the valley, being prominent. The college is part of the
foundation of Union University, organized by the coöperation of
various religious denominations, embracing medical, law and
engineering schools, and also the Dudley Observatory at Albany. Such
eminent men as Jonathan Edwards and Eliphalet Nott have been its
presidents. Some distance up the Mohawk is Amsterdam, another
flourishing town, and the whole region thereabout is covered with
fields of broom-corn, the Mohawk Valley being the greatest producer of
brooms in America, and the chief broom-makers the Shakers, who have
several settlements here. To the northward of the river above
Amsterdam is Fort Johnson, a large stone dwelling which was the home
of Sir William Johnson, the noted pioneer and colonial General. In
1738, at the age of twenty-three, he came out from England to manage
Admiral Warren's large estates in the Mohawk Valley. He soon became
very friendly with the Indians, the Mohawks adopting him as a sachem,
and he had much to do with the Indian colonial management. He finally
became the superintendent of the affairs of the Indian Six Nations,
the Iroquois, and got his title of baronet for his victory over the
French in 1755 at Fort William Henry, on Lake George. He was in the
subsequent campaigns, captured Fort Niagara in 1759, and was present
at the surrender of Montreal, and finally of Canada, the next year.
For his services in these important conflicts the King gave him a
tract of one hundred thousand acres north of the Mohawk, long known as
"Kingsland" or the "Royal Grant." He brought in colonists and started
Johnstown on this tract. He was active in his duties as head of the
Indian Department, his death in 1774 resulting from over-exertion at
an Indian Council. He was the great pioneer of the Mohawk, his
influence over the Indians being potential, and his village of
Johnstown, about eight miles north of the river, now having about five
thousand people. He had a hundred children by many mistresses, both
Indian and white, his favorite, by whom he had eight children, being
the sister of the famous Mohawk chief, Joseph Brant.
THE LEAGUE OF THE SIX NATIONS.
All this region, and the lands westward beyond the Central Lake
District of New York, was the home of that noted Indian Confederation
of America which the French named the Iroquois. When the earliest
French explorers found them, they were the "Five Nations"--the
Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas and Mohawks. Their name as a
league was Hodenosaunee, meaning "they form a cabin,"--this being
their idea of a combination, offensive and defensive, and within their
figurative cabin the fire was in the centre at Onondaga, while the
Mohawk was the door. They were great warriors, and their tradition was
that the Algonquins had driven them from Canada to the south side of
Lake Ontario. Subsequently a portion of the Tuscaroras came up from
the South, and being admitted to the Confederacy, it became the "Six
Nations." They had considerable warlike knowledge. Near Elmira, which
is close to the Pennsylvania boundary south of Seneca Lake, their
ancient fortifications are still visible, having been located with the
skill of a military engineer as a defense against attacks. Fort Hill
at Auburn was also an Iroquois fortification that has yielded many
relics, and other works constructed by them are shown in various
places. The league carried on almost continuous warfare against the
neighboring tribes and the frontier colonists, and were conspicuous in
all the colonial wars. When in their greatest prosperity they numbered
about fifteen thousand, and over ten thousand now exist, being located
on Canadian reservations adjacent to the St. Lawrence River, and on
eight reservations in New York, where there are about five thousand,
in civilized life, chiefly engaged in agriculture. In the ancient
league they were ruled by the Council of Sachems of the various
tribes, the central council-fire being upon the shore of Onondaga
Lake, and the Atotarho, or head sachem of the Onondagas, being chief
of the league.
In colonial New York the westernmost tribe was the Senecas, whose
hunting-grounds extended from the Central Lake District to Lakes
Ontario and Erie. When the Dutch pioneers encountered these Indians
they were found to have the almost unpronounceable name of
"Tsonnundawaonos," meaning the "great hill people," and the nearest
the Dutch could come to it was to call them "Sinnekaas," which in time
was changed to Senecas. The Quakers took great interest in them, with
such fostering care that three thousand Senecas now live on the
sixty-six thousand acres in their reservations. They have their own
Indian language and special alphabet, and portions of the Scriptures
are printed in it. In their days of power they had two famous
chiefs--Cornplanter, also called Captain O'Beel, the name of his white
father, he being a half-breed, and Red Jacket. The latter lived till
1830 in the Senecas' village near Buffalo. His original Indian name
was Otetiani, or "Always Ready," and the popular title came from a
richly-embroidered scarlet jacket given him by a British officer,
which he always had great pride in wearing. He was a leader among the
Indians of his time and an impressive orator. Next eastward of the
Senecas were the Cayugas, who, when discovered by the French on the
banks of their lake, had about three hundred warriors, and in the
seventeenth century, under French tutelage, their chiefs became
Christians. A remnant of the tribe is in the Indian Territory. The
Onondagas were the "men of the mountain," getting their name from the
highlands where they lived, south of Onondaga Lake. There are about
three hundred now on their reservation and as many more in Canada.
Their language is regarded as the purest of the Iroquois dialects, and
its dictionary has been published. Farther eastward, where the granite
outcroppings of the southern Adirondack ranges appeared, were the
Oneidas, the "tribe of the granite rock," now having on their
reservation at Oneida Castle over two hundred, with many more in
Wisconsin and Canada. The Tuscaroras came into the league in 1713, and
were given a location on the southeastern shore of Oneida Lake, and
they are now on a reservation in Western New York, where over three
hundred live, with more in Canada. Their name was of modern adoption,
after they had assumed some of the habits of the whites, and means the
"shirt-wearers."
The Mohawks lived farther east, in the Mohawk Valley, among the
limestone and granitic formations of the Adirondacks and Eastern New
York, and they were the Agmaque, meaning "the possessors of the
flint." Within the league their name was Ganniagwari, or the
"She-Bear," whence the Algonquins called them Mahaque, which the
English gradually corrupted into Mohawk, the name being also adopted
for their river. The early Dutch settlers at Albany made a treaty with
them which was lasting, and the English also had their friendship.
Their most noted chief was Thayendanega, better known as Joseph Brant,
who espoused the English cause in the Revolution and held a post in
the Canadian Indian Department, his tribe then extending throughout
the whole region between the St. Lawrence and the Hudson. He visited
England in 1786 and collected money to build a church for his people,
and published the Prayer-Book and the Gospel of Mark in Mohawk and
English. He steadily exerted himself after the Revolution to maintain
peace between the frontier Indians and the United States, being
zealously devoted to the welfare of his tribe. He had an estate on the
shore of Lake Ontario, where he died in 1807.
LITTLE FALLS AND UTICA.
In ascending the Mohawk valley the distant view is circumscribed on
the south by the Catskills and Helderbergs, and on the north by the
Adirondack ranges. The outcrops of the latter compress upon the river
in long protruding crags covered with firs and known as the "Noses."
There are various villages, started in the eighteenth century as
frontier posts among the Indians. There are also hop-fields in plenty
and much pasture, and finally the hills become higher and the valley
narrower as Little Falls is reached, where the Mohawk forces a passage
through a spur of the Adirondacks, known as the Rollaway. The river,
approaching the gorge, sharply bends from east to south, and plunges
wildly down a series of rapids, the town being set among the rocky
precipices right in the throat of the defile. The place is heaped with
rocks, the stream falling forty-two feet within a thousand yards, the
descent forming three separate cataracts, which give power to numerous
mills on the banks and clustering upon an island in the rapids. They
make cheese and paper, and on either hand precipitous crags rise five
hundred feet above them. The pass is very narrow, compressing the
Erie Canal and the New York Central and West Shore Railways closely
upon the river; in fact, the canal passage has been blasted out of the
solid granite on the southern river-bank. Here can be readily studied
the crystalline rocks of the Laurentian formation, which are described
as "part of the oldest dry land on the face of the globe." It is this
pass through the mountains, made by the Mohawk, that gives the Erie
Canal and the Vanderbilt railways their low-level route between the
Atlantic seaboard and the West. All the other trunk railways climb the
Allegheny ranges and cross them at elevations of two thousand feet or
more, while here the elevation is not four hundred feet, thus avoiding
steep gradients and expensive hauling. The Rollaway stretches for a
long distance, clothed to its summit with pines and birches.
Beyond, the amber waters of Canada Creek flow in from the north,
giving the Mohawk a largely increased current, and the land becomes a
region of gentle hills, with meadows and herds, a scene of pastoral
beauty, the great dairy region of New York. Here is Herkimer, which
was an Indian frontier fort, and a few miles farther is Utica, the
dairymen's and cheese-makers' headquarters, a city of fifty thousand
people. The whole Mohawk valley for miles has an atmosphere of
peacefulness and content, innumerable cows and sheep grazing and
resting upon the rich pastures. The river is narrow and meanders
slowly past Utica, which is built to the southward along the banks of
the canal. This city also grew up around an Indian border post.
General Schuyler, who came westward from Albany, seeking trade, built
Fort Schuyler here in 1758, the grant of land being known as Cosby's
Manor. Then a block-house was built, but the settlement, known as Old
Fort Schuyler, grew very little until after the canal was opened.
Utica had the honor of producing two of the leading men of New York,
Roscoe Conkling and Horatio Seymour, the latter having been Governor
of New York and the Democratic candidate for President when General
Grant was first elected in 1868. The city rises gradually upon a
gentle slope south of the Mohawk, until it reaches one hundred and
fifty feet elevation, Genesee street, the chief highway, wide and
attractive, extending back from the river and across the canal,
bordered by elegant residences, fronted by lawns and fine shade trees.
Its leading public institution is the State Lunatic Asylum, but its
pride is the regulation of the butter and cheese trades of New York.
In journeying through New York, it is noticed that there is an
ambitious nomenclature. The towns are given classic names, as if there
had been an early immigration of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Thus
we were at Troy on the Hudson, and coming up the Mohawk have passed
Fonda, Palatine bridge and Ilion on the route to Utica, while farther
on are Rome and Verona. It seems that in the primitive days of New
York old Simeon de Witt was the Surveyor General, and under his
auspices the remorseless college graduate is said to have wandered
over the country with instrument and map and scattered broadcast
classic names. These flourish most in Western New York. Albion and
Attica, Corfu and Palmyra, are near neighbors there, the latter being
chiefly known to fame as the place where the original Mormon apostle,
"Joe Smith," claimed to have found the sacred golden plates of the
Mormon bible and the stone spectacles through which he interpreted the
signs written upon them. Memphis is near by, and Macedon and Jordan
are adjacent villages. Pompey, Virgil and Ulysses are named up, and
Ovid is between Lakes Seneca and Cayuga, with Geneva at the foot of
Seneca and Ithaca at the head of Cayuga. Auburn--"loveliest village of
the plain"--is to the eastward, and Aurelius, Marcellus and Camillus
are railway stations on the route to Syracuse, one of whose former
names was Corinth. To the southward is Homer, having Nineveh and
Manlius near by; Venice is not far away, and Babylon is down on Long
Island. The Mohawk thus heads in classic ground, rising in the
highlands of Oneida about twenty miles north of Rome, past which it
flows a small and winding brook through the almost level country.
Rome, unlike its ancient namesake, has no hills at all, but is built
upon a plain, having grown up around the Indian frontier outpost of
Fort Stanwix of the Revolution, the battle of Oriskany, in August,
1777, which cut off the reinforcements going to Burgoyne at Saratoga,
thus helping to defeat him, having been fought just outside its
limits. There are about seventeen thousand people in Rome, which is a
prominent lumber market, being at the junction of the Erie and Black
River Canals, the latter fetching lumber down from Canada, which has
come through Lake Ontario. From Rome the narrow Mohawk flows to Utica,
and thence with broadening current onward to the Hudson, its whole
length being about one hundred and forty miles. Its gentle course and
pastoral beauty remind of the pleasant lines of that poet of nature,
John Dyer:
"And see the rivers how they run
Through woods and meads, in shade and sun,
Sometimes swift, sometimes slow,--
Wave succeeding wave, they go
A various journey to the deep,
Like human life to endless sleep!"
TRENTON FALLS.
In the hills north of Utica, the West Canada Creek cuts its remarkable
gorge at Trenton Falls. It is a vigorous stream, rising in the western
slopes of the Adirondacks and flowing to the Mohawk. In getting down
through the limestone rocks from the highlands to the plain adjacent
to the river, it passes into the ravine, giving a magnificent display
of chasms, cascades and rapids, in a gorge of such amazing
construction that it is regarded as a wonder second only to Niagara.
During the ages, the torrent has cut through over four hundred layers
of the stratified limestone, exposing the geological formation to full
view, with the fossil organic remains deposited there as the world was
built. In descending the ravine, there are five prominent cataracts,
besides rapids, all compressed within two miles distance, the
aggregate descent being three hundred and twelve feet. This wonderful
gorge was the Indian Kauy-a-hoo-ra, or the "Leaping Water," and from
its color they called the stream Kahnata, the "amber water," a name
readily corrupted into Canada Creek. The Dutch called the place after
the Grand Pensioner of Holland, Oldenbarneveld, he having sent out the
first colonists under a grant known as the "Holland Patent." It was in
this region Grover Cleveland spent his early life. A grandson of Roger
Sherman, who had charge of the Unitarian church here, is regarded as
the discoverer of the ravine in 1805, and he did much to make it known
to the world. His grave is within sound of the Sherman Fall.
Entering the chasm at the lower end, where the stream passes out from
the rock terrace to the plain, the ravine is found to be about one
hundred feet deep, the almost perpendicular rocky walls built up in
level layers as if by hands, the well-defined separate strata being
from one inch to a foot in thickness, and narrowest at the bottom.
Hemlocks and cedars crown the blackened rocks, their branches hanging
over the abyss, while far below, the boisterous torrent rushes across
the pavement of broad flagstones forming its bed. Descending to the
bottom, the impression is like being in a deep vault, this
subterranean world disclosing operations lasting through ages, during
which the rocks have slowly yielded to the resistless power of the
water and frost that has gradually cut the chasm. Fossils and
petrifactions found in the deepest strata are trod upon, and each thin
layer of the walls, one imposed upon the other, shows the deposit of a
supervening flood happening successively, yet eternity only knows how
long ago. And ages afterwards the torrent came, and during more
successive ages carved out the gorge, until it has penetrated to the
bottom of the limestone.
The torrent flows briskly out of the long and narrow vault, while some
distance above is the lowest of the series of cataracts--the Sherman
Fall--where the water plunges over a parapet of rock forty feet high
into a huge basin it has worked out. The amber-colored waters boil
furiously in this cauldron. Above the Sherman Fall the stream flows
through rapids, the chasm broadening and the lofty walls rising higher
as the hill-tops are more elevated, mounting to two hundred feet above
the torrent at a lofty point called the Pinnacle. The floor of the
ravine is level, and becomes quite wide, with massive slabs, weighing
tons, resting upon it, showing the power of freshets which bring them
down from above, and will ultimately carry them completely through the
gorge to its outlet, so resistless is the sweep of the raging flood at
such times, when every bound these huge stones make over the rocky
floor causes the neighboring hills to vibrate, the stifled thunder of
their progress being heard above the roar of waters. At the head of
this widened gorge is the High Falls, in a grand amphitheatre, the
cataract broken into parts and combining all the varieties of cascade
and waterfall, being one hundred feet high, and the walls of the chasm
rising eighty feet higher to the surface of the land above, which
keeps on rising as the ends of the limestone strata are surmounted.
The top of this High Fall is another perpendicular wall stretching
diagonally across the chasm, and below it the protruding layers of
rock form a sort of huge stairway. Down this the waters fall in
varying fashion, finally condensing as a mass of whirling, shifting
foam into a dark pool beneath. This splendid cataract is fringed about
with evergreens and shrubbery, for between the dark thin slabs of
limestone are inserted thinner strata of crumbling shale, and these
give root-hold to the cedars and other nodding branches clinging to
the walls of the ravine. The waterfall begins at the top with the
color of melted topaz, and is unlike anything elsewhere seen, for the
hemlocks and spruces of the mountain regions impart the amber hue to
the torrent. Descending, the changing tints become steadily lighter,
until the brown turns to a creamy white, which is finally lost under
the cloud of spray at the foot of the lower stairway slide, while
beyond, the water rushes away black in hue and driving forward almost
as if shot from a cannon.
Above is another great amphitheatre, floored with rocky layers, upon
which the stream flows in gentler course. In this is the Milldam Fall,
a ledge about fourteen feet high, over which the waters make a uniform
flow all across the ravine. This has above it an expanded platform of
level slabs almost a hundred feet wide, fringed on each side with
cedars, the attractive place being called the Alhambra. At the upper
end a naked rock protrudes about sixty feet high, from which a stream
falls as a perpetual shower-bath. The creek rushes down another
complex stairway in the Alhambra Cascade. The ravine above suddenly
contracts, and the walls beyond change their forms into shapes of
curves and projections. Another cascade of whirling, foaming waters is
passed, and a new amphitheatre entered, where great slabs of rock have
fallen from the walls and lie on the floor, ready to be driven down
the ravine by freshets. The torrent here develops another curious
formation, known as the Rocky Heart. Curved holes are being rounded
out by whirling boulders of granite, which are kept constantly
revolving by the running water, and thus readily act upon the softer
limestones. The chasm goes still farther up to the Prospect Falls, a
cataract twenty feet high, near the beginning of the ravine.
Canada Creek passes out of the lower end of the gorge, where the
limestone layers are exhausted, and their edges fall off in terraces
sharply to the lower level, and almost down to the surface of the
stream. All about the broadened channel, as it flows away towards the
Mohawk, lie the huge slabs and boulders driven down through the chasm
by repeated freshets, with the amber waters foaming among them. This
wonderful ravine is a geological mine, disclosing the transition
rocks, the first containing fossil organic remains. In the lower part
of the chasm they are compact carbonate of lime, extremely hard and
brittle, and a dark blue, almost black, in color. At the High Fall,
and above to the Rocky Heart, the upper strata are from twelve to
eighteen inches thick, and composed of the crystallized fragments of
the vertebræ of crinoidea and the shells of terebratulæ. These fossils
of the Silurian period are numerous. The strata throughout the chasm
are remarkably horizontal, varying, as they ascend, from one inch to
eighteen inches in thickness. They are very distinct, and separated by
a fine shaly substance which disintegrates upon exposure to the air or
moisture. From the top to the bottom of the ravine small cracks
extend down perpendicularly, and run in a straight line through the
whole mass across the stream. These divide the pavements into
rhomboidal slabs. The most interesting fossils are found, among them
the large trilobite, a crustacean that could both swim and crawl upon
the bottom of the sea. This extraordinary place is in reality a
Titanic fissure, cracked through the crust of mother earth, down which
roars and dashes a tremendous torrent.
THE LAKES OF NEW YORK.
The northwestern boundary of the State of New York is formed by Lake
Ontario, of which the St. Lawrence River is the outlet, flowing
northeastward into Canada. Ontario is the smallest and the lowest in
level of the group of Great Lakes, its name given by the Indians
meaning the "beautiful water." It is about one hundred and eighty
miles long, and its surface is two hundred and thirty-one feet above
tide, but it is fully five hundred feet deep, so that it has more
depth below the ocean level than the lake surface is above. It has a
marked feature along its southern shore, where a narrow elevation
known as the "Lake Ridge" extends nearly parallel with the edge of the
lake, and from four to eight miles distant. The height of this ridge
usually exceeds one hundred and sixty feet above the lake level, and
in some places is nearly two hundred feet, and it is, throughout, from
five to twenty feet above the immediate surface of the land, there
being a width at the summit of some thirty feet, from which the ground
slopes away on both sides. This ridge is regarded as an ancient
shore-line formed by the waters of the lake, and the chief public
highway on the southern side of the lake is laid for many miles along
its summit. The main tributaries of Ontario from New York are the
Black, Oswego and Genesee Rivers. The Black River gathers various
streams draining the western slopes of the Adirondacks, and its name
comes from the dark amber hue of the waters. It flows northwest
through a forest-covered region, pours down Lyons Falls, a fine
cataract of seventy feet, passes the manufacturing towns of Lowville
and Watertown, and finally discharges by the broadened estuary of
Black River Bay into the east end of Lake Ontario. From Rome, on the
Mohawk, a canal is constructed northward to the Black River.
Westward from Rome the land is an almost level plain, rising into the
Onondaga highlands to the southward. Cazenovia Lake, among these
hills, sends its outlet northward over the plain to Oneida Lake. There
are various little lakelets between, but the ground is impregnated
with sulphur, so that their waters are bitter, and one is consequently
named Lake Sodom. Oneida is a large lake, twenty-three miles long and
several miles broad, with low and marshy shores. In the fertile dairy
region to the southeastward is located the "Inspiration Community" of
Oneida, founded in 1847 by John Humphrey Noyes, a Vermont preacher. In
1834, when twenty-three years old, he experienced what he called a
"second conversion," and announced himself a "perfectionist." He
preached his new faith and finally established the Oneida Community
for its demonstration, with about three hundred members. They maintain
the perfect equality of women with men in all social and business
relations, and have become quite wealthy as manufacturers, farmers and
dairymen. The outlet of Oneida Lake, and in fact the outlet streams of
all the lakes of Central New York, discharge into Oswego River, which
flows northward into Lake Ontario. Oswego means "the small water
flowing into that which is large," and the port at its mouth, noted
for its flour and starch-mills, has about twenty-five thousand people,
and is the largest city on the New York shore of Lake Ontario. This
was an early French settlement in the seventeenth century, when the
river was known by them as the "river of the Onondagas."
The great plain south of Lake Ontario, which is believed to have been
itself formerly a lake bed, rises into highlands farther southward,
and the noted group of lakes of Central New York are scattered in the
valleys which are deeply fissured into these highlands. Most of these
lakes are long and narrow, and they nestle in almost parallel valleys,
their waters occupying the bottoms of deep ravines. These lakes
present much fine scenery, and their shores are among the most
attractive parts of New York. They display vineyards and fruit
orchards and extensive pastures, and their present names are the
original titles given them by the Iroquois, many of whom still live on
reservations near them. Southwest of Oneida is Onondaga Lake, and
farther west Skaneateles and Owasco. Then beyond is the larger Cayuga
Lake, and to the westward Seneca, the largest of the group, sixty
miles long, elevated two hundred feet above Lake Ontario, and of great
depth, estimated to exceed six hundred feet. This lake was never known
to be frozen over but once, and that was late in March many years ago;
steamboats traverse it every day in the year. Cayuga Lake is of
similar character, but of slightly less size and elevation, and in
some places is so deep as to be almost unfathomable. These parallel
lakes are separated by an elevated ridge only a few miles wide, and
their great depth, descending much below the level of Ontario, into
which they discharge, gives evidence to the geologists that their
waters originally drained to the southward. Westward of Seneca is
Keuka or the Crooked Lake, the Indian name meaning "the lake of the
Bended Elbow." It is a pretty sheet of water, having an angle in its
centre, from which starts out another long and narrow branch, so that
its spreading arms make it look much like the aboriginal
signification. It is elevated two hundred and seventy-seven feet
above the level of Seneca Lake, which is only seven miles away.
Beyond Keuka is Canandaigua Lake, the westernmost of the group.
THE SYRACUSE SALT-MAKERS.
Onondaga Lake is comparatively small, being six miles long and about a
mile broad, and it is noted for its salt wells, which have made the
prosperity of the city of Syracuse, the largest in Central New York,
built along Onondaga Creek south of the lake, and upon the slopes of
the higher hills to the eastward. An Indian trader started the town in
the eighteenth century, and soon afterwards Asa Danforth began making
salt at Salt Point on the lake, calling his village Salina. When the
Erie Canal came along the place grew rapidly, and it is now a great
canal and railroad centre, with lines radiating in various directions,
and from it the Oswego Canal goes northward to Lake Ontario. The city
has a population approximating a hundred thousand. The salt springs
come out of the rocks of the Upper Silurian period, and are located
chiefly in the marshes bordering Onondaga Lake. The brine wells are
bored in the lowlands surrounding the lake to a depth of two hundred
to over three hundred feet. The State of New York controls the wells
and pumps the brine to supply the evaporating works, which are private
establishments, a royalty of one cent per bushel being charged. The
main impurity that has to be driven out of the brine is sulphate of
lime, and the finer product has a high reputation, the "Onondaga
Factory-Filled Salt" being greatly esteemed. The salt wells were known
to the Indians, and the French Jesuit missionaries found them as early
as 1650, taking salt back to Canada. In 1789 they yielded five hundred
bushels, and they have since produced as high as nine millions of
bushels a year, the annual product now being about three millions. The
brine is first pumped into small shallow vats, where it remains until
the carbonic acid gas escapes and the iron is deposited as an oxide.
It is then led to the evaporating vats, all processes being used,
solar as well as boiling. The land bordering the marshy shores of
Onondaga Lake is framed around by rows of factories and heating
furnaces, while out on the marshes are clusters of little brown
houses, each covering a well and pump. From there the brine is led
through conduits made of bored logs, called the "salt logs," to the
evaporating vats and factories, some going long distances. Everything
throughout the whole district is profusely saturated with salt.
Syracuse is one of the handsomest cities of the Empire State. The New
York Central Railroad passes through the centre of the business
section, the locomotives and ordinary traffic sharing the main street
in common, in front of the chief hotels and stores, for thus has the
town grown up. Just northward, the Erie Canal also goes through the
heart of the city, giving on moonlight nights scenes that are almost
Venetian. The streets are broad, and ornamental squares are frequent,
the chief residential highways--James, Genesee and University
Streets--being bordered with imposing dwellings surrounded by
extensive grounds. Magnificent trees line the streets and broad lawns
stretch back to the dwellings, everything being open to public view,
so that in these parts the town is practically a vast park. To the
eastward rises University Hill, crowned by the buildings of Syracuse
University, a Methodist foundation having eleven hundred students.
Holden Observatory adjoins the grand graystone main college building,
and from this high hill there is a magnificent view over the city and
the oval-shaped lake and its salt marsh border off to the northwest.
The southern view is enclosed by the Onondaga highlands, out of which
Onondaga Creek comes through a deep and winding valley. Back among
these dark blue distant hills still live in pastoral simplicity the
remnants of the "Men of the Mountain,"--the Onondagas,--the ruling
power of the famous Iroquois Confederation.
AUBURN, ITHACA AND CORNELL.
Westward from Syracuse the country is full of lakes. Otisco Lake,--the
"Bitter-nut Hickory,"--is an oval four miles long, embosomed in hills.
To the northwest of Otisco is Skaneateles Lake--the "Long Water"--the
most picturesque of all, set among most imposing hills, which,
notwithstanding the lake is elevated eight hundred and sixty feet,
still rise twelve hundred feet above its surface, giving the waters
the deeply blue tinge of an Italian scene. This lovely lake is sixteen
miles long, and in no place more than a mile and a half wide, its
outlet having a fine cataract. To the westward is Owasco Lake--"the
bridge on the water floating"--eleven miles long and a mile wide,
walled in by rocky bluffs, yet having its shores diversified by
meadows and farm land. About two miles northward, on its outlet, is
the busy manufacturing city of Auburn, with thirty thousand people,
which was the home of William H. Seward, Governor and Senator from New
York, who was President Lincoln's Secretary of State during the Civil
War. Its most extensive establishment is the Auburn Prison, covering
about eighteen acres, enclosed by walls four feet thick and twelve to
thirty-five feet high, there being imprisoned usually about twelve
hundred convicts. The surface of the city is varied by hills, making
handsome villa sites, and the Owasco Lake outlet flows down a series
of rapids, falling one hundred and sixty feet, and utilized by no less
than nine dams to turn the wheels of many mills. Captain Hardenburgh
was the first settler here in 1793, the original name being
"Hardenburgh's Corners." On Fort Hill, one of the highest elevations,
the top of which is supposed to be an eminence originally raised by
the ancient Mound-Builders, and was an Iroquois fortification, is the
Cemetery where are interred the remains of William H. Seward, who died
in 1872.
After crossing a rich grazing country, farther to the westward is
Cayuga Lake--the name meaning "Where they take canoes out"--stretching
from the level plain of Central New York southward into the highlands,
making the watershed between the affluents of the St. Lawrence and the
Susquehanna. Progressing southward along the long and narrow lake, the
hills are found to grow steadily higher, and they reach an elevation
of several hundred feet above its surface. The bordering rocky
buttresses rise up as columns and walls, with accurately-squared
corners, their perpendicular stratification making the flagstone
layers that have been loosened by the frost stand on edge and
separately, seeming almost ready to topple over, while heaps of broken
fragments are strewn at their bases, which, being pulverized by the
action of frost and water into small particles, produce a smooth and
narrow beach. At the head of the lake the deep valley is prolonged
farther southward between even higher enclosing ridges, the Cayuga
Inlet winding through it. Here, about a mile from the lake, is a
flourishing town of twelve thousand people, reproducing the name of
the Ionian Island that was the fabled kingdom of Ulysses--Ithaca. It
is the centre of a grazing region, producing cheese, butter and wool,
and its water-power has given some manufacturing activity, but it is
chiefly known to fame from the surrounding galaxy of waterfalls and
the possession of Cornell University.
Cayuga Lake, at its head, has a rugged verge, and in the glens and
gorges descending four to five hundred feet from the hills to the lake
and its prolonged southern valley, are some of nature's most beautiful
sanctuaries. Fall Creek has eight cataracts within a mile, all of them
charming. It comes tumbling down the Triphammer Fall into a basin,
then over one cascade after another until it plunges down a foaming
precipice and finally goes over the Ithaca Fall, one hundred and sixty
feet high and about as wide. Alongside the lake, near the outlet of
this brook, are remarkable formations,--Tower Rock, a perfect columnar
structure forty feet high, and Castle Rock, a massive wall with a
grand arched doorway opened through it--both strange freaks of nature.
The ravine of Cascadilla Creek to the southward is also filled with
cascades, and on an elevated plateau between the two gorges is Cornell
University. The most noted waterfall of Cayuga is the Taghanic--the
original Indian word meaning "Water enough." A stream flows in from
the western hills a short distance north of Ithaca, and the fall is
two hundred and fifteen feet high and some distance back in the ridge.
Its interesting features are the great height, the very deep ravine
and its sharply-defined outlines, and the splendid views; and its
admirers regard it as a worthy rival of the much-praised Swiss
Staubbach. The water breaks over a cleanly-cut table-rock, falls
perpendicularly, and excepting in freshets, it changes into clouds of
spray before reaching the bottom. The rocky enclosing walls rise four
hundred feet high around it, being regularly squared as if laid by
human hands, and this is the highest American waterfall east of the
Rockies.
High above Ithaca, standing upon the brow of the ridge making its
eastern border, are the imposing buildings of Cornell University,
devoted to the free education of both sexes in all branches of
knowledge, the spreading college campus elevated four hundred feet
above the lake. Here are educated eighteen hundred students, who have
about one hundred and eighty instructors. The College of Forestry,
established in 1898, is the only one in the country. The University
has munificent endowments, becoming constantly more valuable, as lands
of steadily increasing worth are among the holdings, the aggregate
being estimated at $8,000,000. At the edge of Ithaca is the mansion
which was the home of Ezra Cornell the founder, who amassed a fortune
mainly in telegraphy, he then being at the head of the Western Union
Company. To his generosity was added the proceeds of the ample school
lands of New York State, the gift of the Federal Government, which he
selected with scrupulous care, and these gave the University its
start. He died in 1874. Others gave supplementary gifts. John McGraw
of Ithaca gave McGraw College, the central building on the campus, two
hundred feet long, with a tower rising one hundred and twenty feet,
containing the great University bell with full chimes, and having a
view forty miles northward along the lake and almost half as far
southward through the deep valley. This structure is flanked by the
North and South University buildings, each one hundred and sixty-five
feet long, all three substantially constructed of dark blue stone with
light gray limestone trimmings. There are also the Sibley Building,
and the magnificent Cascadilla Hall, nearly two hundred feet long,
which is a residence for instructors and students. The Sage College
for females and other handsome buildings adorn the campus, including
an armory, for everything is taught, and a battery of mounted cannon
guards the approach to the grounds.
HAVANA AND WATKINS GLENS.
Seneca Lake, the largest of the group, is a short distance west of
Cayuga, and its prolonged southern valley is bordered by ridges rising
even higher, through which the streams have carved remarkable gorges.
Two of the larger torrents coming into the prolonged Seneca Valley
have hewn out of the hillsides, one on either hand, romantic fissures
of wide renown,--the Havana and Watkins Glens. The Havana Glen is
three miles south of the lake and about a mile long, being cut out of
the eastern wall of the valley. The ravine is steep, having quite a
large stream. Its characteristic is that the water and frost have made
great fissures and caverns, but so fashioned them that all the joints
and corners are right-angles. The cascades are successions of ledges,
the water apparently running down a staircase. If the stream runs over
a waterfall, it comes from a level ledge as if running over a wall. If
it rushes through a gorge, all the corners are square, the sides
perpendicular and the bottom level. If a brigade of stonemasons had
built the place it could hardly have been more accurately constructed.
Several of the cascades are magnificent, the "Bridal Veil" and the
"Curtain Falls" going down a maze of rocky ledges, their frothy waters
making resplendent sheets of exquisite lacework. In one place the
stream flows through a perfectly square grotto known as the "Council
Chamber," entering this great hall by a right-angled bend from an
adjoining square-cut grotto of similar character. Each is a perfect
apartment, the water rushing from one to the other through an
entry-like passage, from which it makes a square turn. The glen is
quite steep, and its "Central Gorge" is a narrow fissure, clean-cut
and deep, making a half-dozen right-angled bends, each lower than the
other, the torrent rushing around the sharp corners and over the
straight edges with wild swiftness and clouds of spray. The visitor
mounts ladders and steps through the spray, and the glen can be
followed a long distance upward past many cascades, its
picturesqueness being enhanced by the huge tree-trunks the torrent
occasionally brings down and lodges in the many angular bends.
[Illustration: _Watkins Glen_]
Watkins Glen, carved out of the western wall of the valley just at the
head of Seneca Lake, is constructed upon a grander scale, yet entirely
different. The torrent has hewn it among similarly laminated rocks,
but the erosive processes have made vast amphitheatres, their great
size dwarfing the diminutive brook flowing like a thread at the
bottom. The entrance, level with the floor of the valley, presents the
same squared and angular features as Havana Glen, but inside it is a
grand amphitheatre enclosed within perpendicular stone walls three
hundred feet high, and is proportionately spacious. It is quickly
seen, however, that within the grand hall the rocky layers, instead of
being squared and angular, have been smoothed and rounded by the
waters, the small but dashing stream flowing over the floor by
graceful curves through circular pools and winding channels. This glen
is built on a prodigious scale, being over three miles long, and its
head rising eight hundred feet above the valley. A narrow cascade
eighty feet high falls at the far end of the entrance amphitheatre,
and climbing up, the visitor enters "Glen Alpha," the first of the
vast chambers. There are successive glens and caverns as one proceeds
onward and upward through the "Cavern Gorge" and "Glen Obscura," where
a hotel and chalet are perched on the rocky ledges at four hundred
feet elevation. Above is the "Sylvan Gorge," and then the fissure
broadens out into its grandest section, the "Glen Cathedral," a
magnificent nave, with walls rising nearly three hundred feet, the
rocky layers giving it a level stone floor. It has the "Pulpit Rock"
and "Baptismal Font," and climbing out one hundred and seventy feet
upward alongside a cascade, the visitor then goes onward past more
grottoes, falls and gorges for a long distance, until the "Glen Omega"
is reached at the top. Here an airy railway bridge of one of the
Vanderbilt roads spans it at two hundred feet height above the floor.
The shores of Seneca Lake, as one progresses northward, present
various pretty little glens cut deeply into the bordering hills, and
as these become lower there are vineyards and pastures displayed.
Gradually the bluffs disappear, giving place to extensive farm lands
as the level plain at the outlet is reached. Here, in imitation of a
noble Swiss example, the town of Geneva has been built at the foot of
the lake, its chief street extending along the western bank, with
villas peeping out from the foliage. This is a prominent nursery town,
florists and seedsmen being its chief merchants, and a large part of
the adjacent country being devoted to seed-growing and propagation.
Hobart College, a leading Episcopal foundation, is at Geneva. The
outlet of the lake is the Seneca River, having an attractive
waterfall, and after gathering the outflow of this group of Central
New York lakes, it goes away northeastward to Oswego River.
CANISTEO AND CHEMUNG RIVERS.
There are yet two other lakes westward of Seneca, Keuka and
Canandaigua. This region was generally first peopled by the Puritans,
but others also came in, and at the outlet of Keuka is the town of
Penn Yan, so called from the Pennsylvanians and Yankees who settled
it, their descendants being the shrewd and thrifty race known as the
"New York Yankees." There are extensive vineyards on Keuka where are
made some of the best American clarets and champagnes, the centre of
that industry being Hammondsport, at the head of the lake. Beyond is
Canandaigua Lake, the town of Canandaigua standing at its northern end
upon a surface gently sloping towards its shores. The word means the
"place chosen for a village." The heads of all these lakes are in the
southern highlands, making the watershed, south of which the streams
are gathered into the Canisteo River, meaning "the board on the
water," which flows into the Chemung, the "big horn," and thence by
the Susquehanna down through Pennsylvania to the Chesapeake. The Erie
Railway, coming eastward by a wild and lonely route across the
Allegheny ranges, goes down the pretty Canisteo Valley to
Hornellsville, a purely railroad town of twelve thousand people, which
has grown up around the shops and stations. Below, the valley
broadens, and is picturesque between its high bordering ridges, the
stream meandering in wayward fashion over the almost flat intervale.
It passes Addison and the town with the unique name of Painted Post,
so called from an Indian monument inscribed in colors, and as the
Canisteo River broadens with the contribution of its swelling
tributaries, it reaches the active manufacturing city of Corning,
having ten thousand people, and here falls into the Chemung, which
comes up northward out of the Allegheny ranges in Pennsylvania to meet
it. The Chemung Valley is a broad and fertile section of flat and
highly cultivated bottom lands, having in its heart the city of
Elmira, with thirty-five thousand inhabitants and many industrial
establishments, making it a busy railroad centre. Here is the Elmira
Reformatory, the Elmira Female College, and the various "Water Cures,"
a species of remedial establishment flourishing throughout Western New
York, where there is apparently no limit to the efficacy or
bountifulness of the water-supply. The broad Chemung flows through
Elmira and beyond down its rich and wide-spreading valley, until at
Athens it loses itself in the swelling waters of the Susquehanna.
THE VALLEY OF THE GENESEE.
Among the rugged mountains of Potter County, in the northern part of
Pennsylvania, the highest land in the State, are the springs feeding
the headwaters of three noted rivers, seeking the ocean in opposite
directions. The Allegheny flows westward and afterwards southward to
the Ohio; the west branch of the Susquehanna goes eastward to break
through the entire Allegheny chain in seeking the Atlantic; and the
smaller stream, the Genesee, flows northward through New York between
two long Allegheny ridges, the chief affluent of Lake Ontario. The
Genesee passes through a valley of great beauty and gives water-power
to many mills, a canal also being constructed to improve its
navigation. After a romantic course of one hundred and fifty miles it
empties into the lake at Charlotte, seven miles north of Rochester.
For much of the distance its course is through a magnificent gorge,
with a succession of cataracts that are renowned in American scenery.
Where it first attacks the highlands of New York to break out of them,
it plunges deeper and deeper down a series of grand cataracts at
Portage. Here the Erie Railway, coming from the westward, has boldly
thrown a stupendous bridge across the tremendous chasm and almost over
the top of the highest cataract. The river makes a gorge in the
yielding rocks, sinking from two hundred and fifty to six hundred
feet deep, and here are the Portage Falls, one cataract after another
making the stream-bed lower, the walls of the wild ravine rising
almost perpendicularly. The railway, crossing at the most favorable
place, has built one of the highest bridges in the country, elevated
two hundred and thirty-five feet above the river, resting upon
lightly-framed steel trusses. From the car windows the river can be
seen far below in what seems a narrow fissure, the current boiling
along and then tumbling down the cataract, the edge of which crosses
the river diagonally almost beneath the bridge. The waters pour into a
chasm seeming almost bottomless as the spray obscures it. The ravine
extends northward, and in the distance the waters go over a second
fall and then a third, the chasm finally curving around to the right,
making a bend, closing the view more than a mile away, with an
enormous wall of bare rock. The three cataracts fall respectively
seventy, one hundred and ten and one hundred and fifty feet--called
the Upper, Middle and Lower Portage Falls--and for several miles
below, the river flows through the deeper ravine amid equally
magnificent surroundings.
This descent brings the Genesee River down from the higher plateau to
what is known as the "Genesee Level," for at the end of the defile,
fifteen miles below Portage, it flows out of the highlands over
pleasant lands and with gentler current. Here on the "Genesee Flats"
is the village of Mount Morris, and near it has been placed, alongside
the ravine, the rude log cabin, which was originally on the higher
land above Portage, the Indian "Council House of Cascadea," where the
Iroquois chiefs often met. At the removal in 1872, the services were
conducted in the Senecas language, several Indians attending, and the
identical "pipe of peace" given by Washington to Red Jacket was passed
around. Nearby the river emerges through a Titanic gateway in the
rocks to the pastoral region stretching far to the northward, while
far over on the eastern verge is the village of Geneseo, sloping up
the ascent. Its Indian name, meaning the "beautiful valley," is also
given the river. After meandering placidly for miles across these
flats, the Genesee River reaches the "Flour City of the West,"
Rochester, the storage and distributing mart for this fertile valley,
getting its original start and title from the prolific wheat crops.
And here the Genesee plunges down another waterfall which gives power
to the Rochester mills.
When De Witt Clinton, in 1810, exploring the route for the Erie Canal,
crossed the river here, there was not a house. The place was
afterwards the "Hundred Acre Tract," planned in 1812 for a settlement
by three adventurous frontiersmen, and the town was named for one of
them, Nathaniel Rochester. After a few years, the spreading fame of
the fertility of the Genesee Valley attracted a large population, and
it became known as the garden spot of the then "West," so that out of
this grew the flour-mills which have continued to be Rochester's chief
industry. The Genesee River flows through with swift current, the Erie
Canal being carried over on a massive stone aqueduct and the New York
Central Railroad upon a wide bridge, and about a hundred yards beyond,
the river plunges down the great Rochester Fall. The ledge over which
it tumbles is a perpendicular wall, straight and regular in formation,
and almost without fragments of rock at the foot, so that the fall is
a clear one. The shores below are lined with huge stone mills and
breweries, to which races on each bank conduct the water from a dam
above the railroad bridge. This Rochester Fall, down which Sam Patch
jumped to his death, is ninety-six feet high. Below it, the river
flows through a somewhat wider channel, gradually bending to the left,
and then it goes down a second cataract of twenty-five feet height,
and finally, at some distance, over a third and broken fall of
eighty-four feet. As at Portage, this second succession of triple
cataracts sinks the river bed deeper and deeper into the gorge, so
that the enclosing walls are in some places over three hundred feet
high. This gorge is all within the limits of the city, the falls and
rapids having a total descent of two hundred and sixty feet. This
immense water-power, with the traffic facilities of canal and railway,
have made the city, so that there is a population of a hundred and
forty thousand around the Genesee Falls, and manufactures of flour,
beer, clothing, leather and other articles, valued at $75,000,000
annually. In the neighboring region there is also extensive
seed-growing, the Rochester nurseries occupying miles of the level
surface. Rochester University has two hundred students and valuable
geological collections. The city has been a headquarters for the
Spiritualists and advocates of Women's Rights. The Genesee emerges
from the rocky gorge below Rochester, and flows in more tranquil
course northward through a ravine carved deeply into the table-land,
to Lake Ontario, at the little port of Charlotte.
LOCKPORT, CHAUTAUQUA AND ERIE.
Westward from Rochester the country is underlaid by red sandstones,
and at Medina quarries are plentiful, this reproduction of the Arabian
"City of the Prophet" being an extensive supplier of these dark-red
Medina sandstones, as the geologists call them. Beyond, at Lockport,
the higher terrace is reached, and here the Erie Canal is raised by an
imposing series of five double locks from the Genesee level up to the
Lake Erie level. Through these locks and by means of a subsidiary
canal an immense water-power is obtained which is utilized by the
Lockport mills. The much lower Genesee level is marked by the base of
a bluff, stretching through the town and across the adjacent region,
evidently the bank of an ancient lake.
In western New York a high ridge crosses the country south of Lake
Erie, and to the southward of its most elevated portion there
stretches the elongated Chautauqua Lake, almost bisected by two
jutting points at its centre. This charming lake is eighteen miles
long, three or four miles wide, and elevated seven hundred and thirty
feet above Lake Erie, its outlet draining southward into a tributary
of the Allegheny River. Its elevation above tide is nearly thirteen
hundred feet. The low hills enclosing it are popular summer resorts,
and on the western bank in the season are drawn enormous crowds to the
Chautauqua Assembly, which has established the "Summer School of
Philosophy" for education. There are often twenty to thirty thousand
people here at one time, and the plan has been so successful that it
has various imitators elsewhere, the "Chautauqua idea" being varying
instruction with recreation. The Indians named this lake, from the
mists arising, Chautauqua, or "the foggy place." Beyond this popular
resort the land falls away, and crossing the New York western boundary
into the "Pennsylvania Triangle," a jutting corner thrust up to Lake
Erie, a fine harbor is found at Erie, known in earlier history by its
French name of Presque Isle. This triangle of the Keystone State,
giving about forty miles of coast-line on the lake, has a history.
The early surveyors discovered that, owing to misdescriptions in
various English grants, this large triangular tract was, from a legal
standpoint, "nowhere." It was north of Pennsylvania, west of New York
and east of the Connecticut Western Reserve, which became part of
Ohio. Pennsylvania finally bought it, paying the United States
Government, in 1792, $150,640 for it, and also getting the Indian
title for £1200. It was a good purchase, for Erie harbor is the best
on the lake. Erie has about fifty thousand people, and is in a
picturesque situation, owing to the beauty of the bay and the outlying
island, which was formerly a peninsula. There is additional protection
by a breakwater, making an extensive basin with spacious docks that
have a large trade. The French were the early settlers, building their
"Fort de la Presque Isle" in 1749, which was one of the chain of
outposts they projected between the St. Lawrence and the Ohio. It was
here that Commodore Perry hastily built the rude fleet with which he
gained the noted victory over the Anglo-Canadian fleet on Lake Erie in
1813, and back here he afterwards in triumph towed his prizes. The
remains of his flagship lie in the harbor. Perry's guns were the
heaviest in that memorable contest for control of the lake, and
therefore he won. In Lake Side Cemetery is buried Captain Charles
Vernon Gridley, who commanded Admiral Dewey's flagship, the "Olympia,"
at the battle of Manila Bay in 1898.
THE CITY OF BUFFALO.
Dunkirk, in New York, northeast of Erie, is another harbor on the
lake, and a terminal of the Erie Railway, the land hereabout being the
monotonous level plain of western New York. Rounding the eastern end
of Lake Erie, at the head of its outlet stream, the Niagara River, is
Buffalo, the chief port of the lake and the metropolis of western New
York. It is surrounded for miles upon the level land with railway
terminals and car-yards, amid which factories, breweries,
coal-pockets, cattle-pens and grain elevators are distributed. This
great city, which has grown to four hundred thousand population, takes
it name from the American bison, who roamed in large herds over the
lands adjacent to Lake Erie as late as 1720, and thus gave the name to
Buffalo Creek. The city covers a broad surface at the foot of Lake
Erie, and is coeval with the nineteenth century, having been founded
in 1801; but in the earlier years it was only a military post, and did
not assume a commercial standing or begin to grow much until after the
opening of the Erie Canal. The neighboring post of Niagara, a short
distance down that river, was of more importance in the early days of
the frontier, for it was on Niagara River, in 1669, that the Sieur de
La Salle, who described the frozen stream as "like a plain paved with
polished marble," built and in the following summer launched the
"Griffin," the first rude vessel that explored the Upper Lakes.
Afterwards one or two trading cabins appeared on Buffalo Creek, and
then there was constructed a stockade fort. For thirty years the
hunters and traders fought the savages and captured wild beasts, and
then, after an interval of peace, the War of 1812 came with new
ravages, during which the little settlement around the stockade at
Buffalo was burnt by the British, who held the fort at the entrance to
Niagara River. When the Erie Canal was opened, the expansion of the
settlement became rapid, and its eligible position at the point where
the lake commerce had to connect with the canal and the railways
leading to the Atlantic seaboard has since given full scope to
business enterprise and made it a large and wealthy city.
The Buffalo suburbs are gridironed by railroads, and their terminals
spread along the water-front and the sinuosities of Buffalo Creek. The
grain elevators, as in all the lake cities, are a prominent feature,
and they stand like huge monsters, forty of them, with high heads and
long trunks along the creek and canal basins as if waiting for their
prey. The fleets of vessels come over the lakes laden with grain from
the West; tugs take them to one of these monsters, and down out of the
long neck is plunged a trunk deep into the vessel's hold, which sucks
up all the grain. It is stored and weighed and sent on its journey
eastward. If this is by canal, the barge waits on the other side, and
the grain runs down into it through another trunk; if by railway, the
cars are run under or alongside the elevator and quickly filled. Then
the lake vessels are laden with coal for the return voyage. While an
American gives these elevators scant attention, being used to them,
not so the foreigner, who regards them with the greatest curiosity.
Thus wrote Anthony Trollope about them: "An elevator is as ugly a
monster as has yet been produced. In uncouthness of form it outdoes
those obsolete old brutes who used to roam about the semi-aqueous
world and live a most uncomfortable life, with their great hungering
stomachs and huge unsatisfied maws. Rivers of corn and wheat run
through these monsters night and day. And all this wheat which passes
through Buffalo comes loose in bulk; nothing is known of sacks or
bags. To any spectator in Buffalo this becomes immediately a matter of
course; but this should be explained, as we in England are not
accustomed to see wheat travelling in this open, unguarded and
plebeian manner. Wheat with us is aristocratic, and travels always in
its private carriage."
The extensive commerce of Buffalo is varied by iron manufacturing,
breweries, distilleries, oil refineries and other industries, but the
elevators, coal chutes and railroad and canal business seem to
overshadow everything else. The city has wide tree-lined streets, and
is most handsome with its many fine buildings. There is an extensive
system of attractive parks connected by boulevards; broad streets
lined with well-built residences, and in the newer parts the level
surface is filled with ornamental homes, some most expensively
constructed and elaborately adorned. The well-kept lawns and gardens
are fully open to view, and Delaware Avenue, thus bordered, is one of
the most attractive streets. On the Main Street, among many impressive
structures, is the huge Ellicott Square Building, said to be the
largest office-building in the world, housing a business community
approximating five thousand persons. There are also two public
Libraries and many handsome churches.
The locality of greatest interest in Buffalo is probably the little
Prospect Park out at the edge of Lake Erie, where its waters flow into
Niagara River. The basins and harbor making the beginning of the Erie
Canal, which we have traced all across New York State, are down at the
edge of the lake, and a steep bluff, rising about sixty feet, makes
the verge of the Park, and continues around along the bank of the
river. Here it is crowned by an esplanade surrounding the remains of
old Fort Porter, a dilapidated relic of bygone days of frontier
conflicts. A couple of superannuated cannon point their muzzles across
the water towards Canada, but otherwise the locality is peaceful. A
small military force is kept here, probably to watch the British Fort
Erie over on the opposite river bank, a few hundred yards off, but
the worst conflicts now are bouts at playing ball. The protecting
harbor breakwater is out in front, and seen down the Niagara River are
the light trusses of the International Railway Bridge, spanning its
swift current, and the Erie Canal alongside the bank. Into the narrow
river sweeps the drainage of the Great Lakes, an enormous mass of
water, and in the centre the city has placed a large crib, tapping the
clear current for its water-supply. The powerful torrent flows
steadily northward out of Lake Erie, with a speed of six or seven
miles an hour, to make the Niagara cataract, twenty miles away, and
show its tremendous force in the Niagara gorge. In the words of
Goethe:
"Water its living strength first shows,
When obstacles its course oppose."
NIAGARA.
The Indians who first looked upon the world's greatest cataract gave
the best idea of it in their appropriate name, "The Thunder of
Waters." There is no setting provided for it in the charms of natural
scenery; it has no outside attractions. All its beauty and sublimity
are within the rocky walls of its stupendous chasm. The approaches
from every direction are dull and tedious, the surrounding country
being flat. The forests are sparse and there are few fine trees, these
being confined to the verge of the abyss, and being generally of
recent planting. The Niagara River flows northward from Lake Erie
through a plain. The Lake Erie level is five hundred and sixty-four
feet above the sea, and in its tortuous course of about thirty-six
miles to Lake Ontario, the Niagara River descends three hundred and
thirty-three feet, leaving the level of Ontario still two hundred and
thirty-one feet above the sea. More than half of all the fresh water
on the entire globe--the whole enormous volume from the vast lake
region of North America, draining a territory equalling the entire
continent of Europe, pours through this contracted channel out of Lake
Erie. There is a swift current for a couple of miles, but afterwards
the speed is gentler as the channel broadens, and Grand Island divides
it. Then it reunites into a wider stream, flowing sluggishly westward,
small islands dotting the surface. About fifteen miles from Lake Erie
the river narrows and the rapids begin. They flow with great speed for
a mile above the falls, in this distance descending fifty-two feet,
Goat Island dividing their channel at the brink of the cataract, where
the river makes a bend from the west back to the north. This island
separates the waters, although nine-tenths go over the Canadian fall,
which the abrupt bend curves into horseshoe form. This fall is about
one hundred and fifty-eight feet high, the height of the smaller fall
on the American side being one hundred and sixty-four feet. The two
cataracts spread out to forty-seven hundred and fifty feet breadth,
the steep wooded bank of Goat Island, separating them, occupying about
one-fourth the distance. The American fall is about eleven hundred
feet wide and the Canadian fall twice that width, the actual line of
the descending waters on the latter being much larger than the breadth
of the river because of its curving form. Recent changes, caused by
falling rock in the apex of this fall, have, however, made it a more
symmetrical horseshoe than had been the case for years. The Niagara
River, just below the cataract, contracts to about one thousand feet,
widening to twelve hundred and fifty feet beneath the new single-arch
steel bridge recently constructed a short distance farther down. For
seven miles the gorge is carved out, the river banks on both sides
rising to the top level of the falls, and the bottom sinking deeper
and deeper as the lower rapids descend towards Lewiston, and in some
places contracting to very narrow limits. Two miles below the cataract
the river is compressed within eight hundred feet, and a mile farther
down, at the outlet of the Whirlpool, where a sharp right-angled turn
is made, the enormous current is contracted within a space of less
than two hundred and fifty feet. In the seven miles distance, these
lower rapids descend about one hundred and four feet, and then with
placid current the Niagara River flows a few miles farther northward
to Lake Ontario.
The view of Niagara is impressive alike upon sight and hearing, and
this impressiveness grows upon the visitor. From the bridge just below
the American fall, and from the Canadian side, the whole grand scene
is in full display, and quickly convinces that no description can
exaggerate Niagara. The Indians first told of the falls, and they are
indicated on Champlain's map of 1632. In 1648 the Jesuit missionary
Rugueneau wrote of them as a "cataract of frightful height." The first
white man who saw them was Father Louis Hennepin, the Franciscan, in
1678, who described them as "a vast and prodigious cadence of water
which falls down after a surprising and astonishing manner, insomuch
that the universe does not afford its parallel. The waters which fall
from this horrible precipice do foam and boil after the most hideous
manner imaginable, making an outrageous noise more terrible than that
of thunder, for when the wind blows out of the south their dismal
roaring may be heard more than fifteen leagues off." Upon Charles
Dickens the first and enduring effect, instant and lasting, of the
tremendous spectacle, was: "Peace--peace of mind, tranquility, calm
recollections of the dead, great thoughts of eternal rest and
happiness." The falls had a sanative influence upon Professor Tyndall,
for, "quickened by the emotions there aroused," he says, "the blood
sped exultingly through the arteries, abolishing introspection,
clearing the heart of all bitterness, and enabling one to think with
tolerance, if not with tenderness, upon the most relentless and
unreasonable foe." After Anthony Trollope had looked upon the cataract
he wrote: "Of all the sights on this earth of ours, I know no other
one thing so beautiful, so glorious and so powerful. That fall is more
graceful than Giotto's Tower, more noble than the Apollo. The peaks of
the Alps are not so astounding in their solitude. The valleys of the
Blue Mountains in Jamaica are less green. The finished glaze of life
in Paris is less invariable; and the full tide of trade around the
Bank of England is not so inexorably powerful."
GEOLOGICAL FORMATION OF NIAGARA.
The estimate is that nine hundred millions of cubic feet of water pour
over Niagara every hour, and great as this mass is, there is a belief
that half the water passing into Lake Erie from the upper lakes does
not go over the falls, but finds its way into Ontario through a
subterranean channel. Nothing demonstrates this theory, but it is
advanced to account for the difference between the amount of water
accumulated in the upper lakes and that going over the falls. The
actual current is sufficiently enormous, however, and steadily wearing
away the rocks over which it descends, it has during the past ages
excavated the gorge of the lower rapids. The land surface, which is
low at Lake Erie, scarcely rising above the level of its waters,
gradually becomes more elevated towards the north, till near Lewiston
it is about forty feet above Erie. The Niagara River thus flows in the
direction of the ascent of this moderately inclined plane. Beyond this
the surface makes a sudden descent towards Lake Ontario of about two
hundred and fifty feet down to a plateau, upon which stands Lewiston
on the American side and Queenston on the Canadian side of the river.
There thus is formed a bold terrace looking out upon Ontario, from
which that lake is seven miles away, and from the foot of the terrace
the surface descends gently one hundred and twenty feet farther to the
lake shore. The gorge through which the river flows is three hundred
and sixty-six feet deep at this terrace. There is no doubt the first
location of the great cataract was on the face of the terrace near
Lewiston, and it has gradually retired by the eating away, year after
year, of the rocky ledges over which the waters pour. This, however,
has not been done in a hurry, for the geologists studying the subject
estimate that it has required nearly thirty-seven thousand years to
bring the falls from Lewiston back to their present location. In fact,
from the stratification, Professor Agassiz expressed the opinion that
at one time there were three distinct cataracts in Niagara River.
During the brief time observations have been made, great fragments of
rocks have been repeatedly carried down by the current pouring over
Niagara, the frosts assisting disintegration. This caused not only a
recession but decided changes in appearance. Since 1842 the New York
State geologists, who then made a careful and accurate topographical
map, have been closely watching these changes, and the average rate of
recession is estimated at slightly over two feet annually. In Father
Hennepin's sketch of 1678 there was a striking feature, since entirely
disappeared, a third fall on the Canadian side facing the line of the
main cataract, and caused by a large rock turning the diverted fall in
this direction, this rock falling, however, in the eighteenth century.
The rate at which recessions occur is not uniform. No change may be
apparent for several years, and the soft underlying strata being
gradually worn away, great masses of the upper and harder formations
then tumble down, causing in a brief period marked changes. At the
present location of the cataract, sheets of hard limestone cover the
surface of the country, and from the top of the falls to eighty or
ninety feet depth. Shaly layers are under these. All the strata slope
gently downward against the river current at the rate of about
twenty-five feet to the mile. Above the falls, in the rapids, the
limestone strata are piled upon each other, until about fifty feet
more are added to the formation, when they all disappear under the
outcropping edges of the next series above, composed of marls and
shales. Through these piles of strata the cataract has worked its way
back, receding probably most rapidly in cases where, as at present,
the lower portion of the cutting was composed of soft beds of rock,
which being hollowed out and removed by frost and water, let down the
harder strata above. The effect of continual recession must be to
diminish the height of the falls, both by raising the river level at
their base and by the sloping of the surmounting limestone strata to a
lower level. A recession of two miles farther, the geologists say,
will cut away both the hard and the soft layers, and then the cataract
will become almost stationary on the lower sandstone formation, with
its height reduced to about eighty feet. This diminution in the
Niagara attractions might be startling were it not estimated that it
can hardly be accomplished for some twelve thousand years.
APPEARANCE OF NIAGARA.
The best view of the great cataract is from the Canadian shore just
below it, where, from an elevation, the upper rapids can be seen
flowing to the brink of the fall. A bright day is an advantage, when
the green water tints are most marked. The Canadian shore above,
curves around from the westward, and in front are the dark and
precipitous cliffs of Goat Island, surmounted by foliage. The Canadian
rapids come to the brink an almost unbroken sheet of foaming waters,
but the narrower rapids on the American side are closer, and have a
background of little islands, with torrents foaming between. The
current passing over the American fall seems shallow, compared with
the solid masses of bright green water pouring down the Canadian
horseshoe. There, on either hand, is an edge of foaming streams,
looking like clusters of constantly descending frosted columns, with a
broad and deeply recessed, bright-green central cataract, giving the
impressive idea of millions of tons of water pouring into an abyss,
the bottom of which is obscured by seething and fleecy clouds of
spray. On either side, dark-brown, water-worn rocks lie at the base,
while the spray bursts out into mammoth explosions, like puffs of
white smoke suddenly darting from parks of artillery. The water comes
over the brink comparatively slowly, then falls with constantly
accelerated speed, the colors changing as the velocity increases and
air gets into the torrent, until the original bright green becomes a
foaming white, which is quickly lost behind the clouds of spray
beneath. These clouds slowly rise in a thin, transparent veil far
above the cataract. From under the spray the river flows towards us,
its eddying currents streaked with white. A little steamboat moves
among the eddies, and goes almost under the mass of falling water, yet
finds a practically smooth passage. Closer, on the left hand, the
American fall appears a rough and broken cataract, almost all foam,
with green tints showing through, and at intervals along its face
great masses of water spurting forward through the torrent as a rocky
obstruction may be met part way down. The eye fascinatingly follows
the steadily increasing course of the waters as they descend from top
to bottom upon the piles of boulders dimly seen through the spray
clouds. Adjoining the American cataract is the water-worn wall of the
chasm, built of dark red stratified rocks, looking as if cut down
perpendicularly by a knife, and whitened towards the top, where the
protruding limestone formation surmounts the lower shales. Upon the
faces of the cliffs can be traced the manner in which the water in
past ages gradually carved out the gorge, while at their bases the
sloping talus of fallen fragments is at the river's edge. Through the
deep and narrow canyon the greenish waters move away towards the
rapids below. It all eternally falls, and foams and roars, and the
ever-changing views displayed by the world's great wonder make an
impression unlike anything else in nature.
GOAT ISLAND.
Niagara presents other spectacles; the islands scattered among the
upper rapids; their swiftly flowing, foaming current rushing wildly
along; the remarkable lower gorge, where the torrent making the
grandest rapids runs finally into the Whirlpool basin with its
terrific swirls and eddies--these join in making the colossal
exhibition. Added to all is the impressive idea of the resistless
forces of Nature and of the elements. Few places are better fitted for
geological study, and by day or night the picture presents constant
changes of view, exerting the most powerful influence upon the mind.
Goat Island between the two falls is a most interesting place,
covering, with the adjacent islets, about sixty acres, and it was long
a favorite Indian Cemetery. The Indians had a tradition that the falls
demand two human victims every year, and the number of deaths from
accident and suicide fully maintains the average. There have been
attempts to romantically rename this as Iris Island, but the popular
title remains, which was given from the goats kept there by the
original white settlers. It was from a ladder one hundred feet high,
elevated upon the lower bank of Goat Island, near the edge of the
Canadian fall, that Sam Patch, in 1829, jumped down the Falls of
Niagara. He endeavored to gain fame and a precarious living by jumping
down various waterfalls, and not content with this exploit, made the
jump at the Genesee falls at Rochester and was drowned. A bridge
crosses from the American shore to Goat Island, and it is recorded
that two bull-terrier dogs thrown from this bridge have made the
plunge over the American falls and survived it. One of them lived all
winter on the carcass of a cow he found on the rocks below, and the
other, very much astonished and grieved, is said to have trotted up
the stairs from the steamboat wharf about one hour after being thrown
into the water and making the plunge.
From the upper point of Goat Island a bar stretches up the river, and
can be plainly seen dividing the rapids which pass on either side to
the American and Canadian falls. A foot-bridge from Goat Island, on
the American side, leads to the pretty little Luna Island, standing at
the brink of the cataract and dividing its waters. The narrow channel
between makes a miniature waterfall, under which is the famous "Cave
of the Winds." Here the venturesome visitor goes actually under
Niagara, for the space behind the waterfall is hollowed out of the
rocks, and amid the rushing winds and spray an idea can be got of the
effects produced by the greater cataracts. Here are seen the rainbows
formed by the sunlight on the spray in complete circles; and the cave,
one hundred feet high, and recessed into the wall of the cliff, gives
an excellent exhibition of the undermining processes constantly going
on. Upon the Canadian side of Goat Island, at the edge of the fall,
foot-bridges lead over the water-worn and honeycombed rocks to the
brink of the great Horseshoe. Amid an almost deafening roar, with
rushing waters on either hand, there can be got in this place probably
the best near view of the greater cataract. Here are the Terrapin
Rocks, and over on the Canadian side, at the base of the chasm, are
the fragments of Table Rock and adjacent rocks which have recently
fallen, with enormous masses of water beating upon them. In the midst
of the rapids on the Canadian side of Goat Island are also the pretty
little islands known as the "Three Sisters" and their diminutive
"Little Brother," with cascades pouring over the ledges between
them--a charming sight. The steep descent of the rapids can here be
realized, the torrent plunging down from far above one's head, and
rushing over the falls. This fascinating yet precarious region has
seen terrible disasters and narrow escapes. The overpowering view of
all, from Goat Island, is the vast mass of water pouring down the
Canadian falls. This is fully twenty feet in depth at the brink of the
cataract, and it tumbles from all around the deeply recessed Horseshoe
into an apparently bottomless pool, no one yet having been able to
sound its depth. In 1828 the "Michigan," a condemned ship from Lake
Erie, was sent over this fall, large crowds watching. She drew
eighteen feet water and passed clear of the top. Among other things on
her deck were a black bear and a wooden statue of General Andrew
Jackson. The wise bear deserted the ship in the midst of the rapids
and swam ashore. The ship was smashed to pieces by the fall, but the
first article seen after the plunge was the statue of "Old Hickory,"
popping headforemost up through the waters unharmed. This was
considered a favorable omen, for in the autumn he was elected
President of the United States.
THE RAPIDS AND THE WHIRLPOOL.
The surface of Niagara River below the cataract is for some distance
comparatively calm, so that small boats can move about and pass almost
under the mass of descending waters. The deep and narrow gorge
stretches far to the north with two ponderous international railroad
bridges thrown across it in the distance, carrying over the Vanderbilt
and Grand Trunk roads. An electric road is constructed down the bottom
of the gorge on the American bank, and another along its top on the
Canadian side. The water flows with occasional eddies, its color a
brilliant green under the sunlight, the gorge steadily deepening, the
channel narrowing, and when it passes under the two railroad bridges,
which are close together, the river begins its headlong course down
the Lower Rapids leading to the Whirlpool. With the speed of an
express train, the torrent runs under these bridges, tossing, foaming
and rolling in huge waves, buffeting the rocks, and thus it rushes
into the Whirlpool. Viewed from the bottom of the gorge alongside the
torrent, the effect is almost painful, its tempestuous whirl and
headlong speed having a tendency to make the observer giddy. The
rushing stream is elevated in the centre far above the sides, the
waves in these rapids at times rising thirty feet, tossing wildly in
all directions, and coming together with tremendous force. Huge rocks,
fallen in earlier ages, evidently underlie the torrent. It was in
these terrible rapids that several daring spirits, and notably Captain
Webb in 1883, attempted, unprotected, to swim the river, and paid the
penalty with their lives. More recently these rapids have been safely
passed in casks, peculiarly constructed, although the passengers got
rough usage. The Whirlpool at the end of the rapids is a most
extraordinary formation. The torrent runs into an oblong pool, within
an elliptical basin, the outlet being at the side through a narrow
gorge not two hundred and fifty feet wide, above which the rocky walls
tower for three hundred feet. Into this basin the waters rush from the
rapids, their current pushing to its farthest edge, and then, rebuffed
by the bank of the abyss, returning in an eddy on either hand. These
two great eddies steadily circle round and round, and logs coming down
the rapids sometimes swim there for days before they are allowed to
get to the outlet. Upon the left-hand side of this remarkable pool the
eddy whirls around without obstruction, while that upon the right
hand, where the outlet is, rebounds upon the incoming torrent and is
thrown back in huge waves of mixed foam and green, the escaping waters
finally rushing out through the narrow opening, and on down more
brawling rapids to the end of the deep and wonderful gorge, and thence
in placid stream through the level land northward to Lake Ontario.
NIAGARA INDUSTRIES AND BATTLES.
The town of Niagara Falls, which has about seven thousand people, long
had its chief source of prosperity in the influx of sight-seers, but
it has recently developed into an important industrial centre through
the establishment of large works utilizing the power of the falls by
means of electricity. Some distance above the cataract on the American
side a tunnel starts, of which the outlet is just below the American
fall. This tunnel is one hundred and sixty-five feet below the river
surface at the initial point, and passes about two hundred feet
beneath the town, being over a mile long. Part of the waters of the
Upper Rapids are diverted to the head of the tunnel, and by falling
through deep shafts upon turbine wheels the water-power is utilized
for dynamos, and in this way an enormous force is obtained from the
electricity, which is used in various kinds of manufacturing, for
trolley roads and other purposes, some of the power being conducted to
Buffalo. A similar method is to be availed of on the Canadian side. It
is estimated that in various ways the Niagara Falls furnish fully four
hundred thousand horse-power for industrial uses, and the amount
constantly increases. The largest dynamos in the world, and the most
complete electrical adaptations of power are installed at these
Niagara works.
But the history of Niagara has not been always scenic and industrial.
In 1763 occurred the horrible massacre of the "Devil's Hole,"
alongside the gorge of the Lower Rapids, when a band of Senecas
ambushed a French commissary train with an escort, the whole force but
two, who escaped, being killed, while reinforcements, hurried from
Lewiston at the sound of the muskets, were nearly all caught and
tomahawked in a second ambush. Many of the victims were thrown alive
from the cliffs into the boiling Niagara rapids, their horses and
wagons being hurled down after them. There were repeated actions near
Niagara in the War of 1812. In October, 1812, the battle of Queenston
Heights was fought, the Americans storming the terrace and killing
General Brock, the British commander, whose monument is erected there,
but being finally defeated and most of them captured. There were
various contests near by in 1813, and the battle of Chippewa took
place above the falls on July 5, 1814, the British being defeated. On
July 25th the battle of Lundy's Lane was fought just west of the
falls, between sunset and midnight of a summer night, a contest with
varying success and doubtful result, the noise of the conflict
commingling with the roar of the cataract, and the dead of both armies
being buried on the field, so that, in the words of Lossing, "the
mighty diapason of the flood was their requiem."
"O'er Huron's wave the sun was low,
The weary soldier watched the bow
Fast fading from the cloud below
The dashing of Niagara.
"And while the phantom chained his sight
Ah! little thought he of the fight,--
The horrors of the dreamless night,
That posted on so rapidly."
Thus majestically wrote Mrs. Sigourney of this matchless cataract of
Niagara:
"Flow on forever in thy glorious robe
Of terror and of beauty. Yea, flow on,
Unfathomed and resistless. God hath set
His rainbow on thy forehead, and the cloud
Mantled around thy feet. And He doth give
Thy voice of thunder power to speak of Him
Eternally--bidding the lip of man
Keep silence, and upon thine altar pour
Incense of awe-struck praise. Earth fears to lift
The insect trump that tells her trifling joys,
Or fleeting triumphs, 'mid the peal sublime
Of thy tremendous hymn. Proud Ocean shrinks
Back from thy brotherhood, and all his waves
Retire abashed. For he hath need to sleep,
Sometimes, like a spent laborer, calling home
His boisterous billows from their vexing play,
To a long, dreary calm: but thy strong tide
Faints not, nor e'er with failing heart forgets
Its everlasting lesson, night or day.
The morning stars, that hailed Creation's birth,
Heard thy hoarse anthem mixing with their song
Jehovah's name; and the dissolving fires,
That wait the mandate of the day of doom
To wreck the Earth, shall find it deep inscribed
Upon thy rocky scroll."
DESCENDING THE RIVER ST. LAWRENCE.
XIV.
DESCENDING THE RIVER ST. LAWRENCE.
The Great River of Canada -- Jacques Cartier -- The Great Lakes
-- The Ancient Course -- The St. Lawrence Canals -- Toronto --
Lake of the Thousand Islands -- Kingston -- Garden of the Great
Spirit -- Clayton -- Frontenac -- Round Island -- Alexandria
Bay -- Brockville -- Ogdensburg -- Prescott -- Galop, Plat and
Long Sault Rapids -- Cornwall -- St. Regis -- Lake St. Francis
-- Coteau, Split Rock, Cascades and Cedars Rapids -- Lake St.
Louis -- Lachine -- Caughnawaga -- Lachine Rapids -- Montreal
-- St. Mary's Current -- St. Helen's Island -- Montreal
Churches and Religious Houses -- Hochelaga -- First Religious
Colonization -- Dauversière and Olier -- Society of Notre Dame
de Montreal -- Maisonneuve -- Mademoiselle Mance -- Marguerite
Bourgeoys -- Madame de la Peltrie -- The Accommodation --
Victoria Tubular Bridge -- Seminary of St. Sulpice -- Hotel
Dieu -- The Black Nuns -- The Gray Nunnery -- McGill University
-- Place d'Armes -- Church of Notre Dame -- Cathedral of St.
Peter -- Notre Dame de Lourdes -- Christ Church Cathedral --
Champ de Mars -- Notre Dame de Bonsecours -- Rapids of St. Anne
-- Lake of the Two Mountains -- Trappists -- Mount Royal --
Ottawa River -- Long Sault Rapids -- Thermopylæ -- Louis Joseph
Papineau -- Riviere aux Lièvres -- The Habitan -- The Metis --
Ottawa -- Bytown -- Chaudière Falls -- Rideau Canal -- Dominion
Government Buildings -- Richelieu River -- Lake St. Peter --
St. Francis River -- Three Rivers -- Shawanagan Fall -- St.
Augustin -- Sillery -- Quebec -- Stadacona -- Samuel de
Champlain -- Montmagny -- Laval de Montmorency -- Jesuit
Missionaries -- Father Davion -- The French Gentilhomme -- Cape
Diamond -- Charles Dilke -- Henry Ward Beecher -- Castle of St.
Louis -- Quebec Citadel -- Wolfe-Montcalm Monument -- General
Montgomery -- Plains of Abraham -- General Wolfe -- The
Basilica -- The Seminary -- English Cathedral -- Bishop
Mountain -- The Ursulines -- Marie Guyart -- Montcalm's Skull
-- Hotel Dieu -- Fathers Brébeuf and Lalemont and their
Martyrdom -- Notre Dame des Victoires -- Dufferin Terrace --
Point Levis -- Beauport -- French Cottages -- Faith of the
Habitans -- Cardinal Newman -- Falls of Montmorency -- La Bonne
Sainte Anne -- Isle of Orleans -- St. Laurent and St. Pierre --
The Laurentides -- Cape Tourmente -- Bay of St. Paul -- Mount
Eboulements -- Murray Bay -- Kamouraska -- Riviere du Loup --
Cacouna -- Tadousac -- Saguenay River -- Grand Discharge and
Little Discharge -- Ha Ha Bay -- Chicoutimi -- Capes Trinity
and Eternity -- Restigouche Region -- Micmac Indians --
Glooscap -- Lorette -- Roberval -- Lake St. John -- Montaignais
Indians -- Trois Pistoles -- Rimouski -- Gaspé -- Notre Dame
Mountains -- Labrador -- Grand Falls -- The Fishermen.
THE GREAT RIVER OF CANADA.
"The first time I beheld thee, beauteous stream,
How pure, how smooth, how broad thy bosom heav'd!
What feelings rushed upon my heart!--a gleam
As of another life my kindling soul received."
Thus sang Maria Brooks to the noble river St. Lawrence, which the
earlier geographers always called "the Great River of Canada." The
first adventurous white man who crossed the seas and found it was the
intrepid French navigator, Jacques Cartier, who sailed into its broad
bay on the festival day of the martyred Saint Lawrence, in 1534. When
this bold explorer started from France on his voyage of discovery he
was fired with religious zeal. St. Malo, on the coast of Brittany, was
then the chief French seaport, and before departing, the entire
company of officers and sailors piously attended a solemn High Mass
in the old Cathedral, and in the presence of thousands received the
venerable Archbishop's blessing upon their enterprise. Cartier, like
all the rest of the early discoverers, was sent under the auspices of
the French Government to hunt for the "Northwest Passage," the short
route from Europe to the Indies, or, as described in his instructions,
to seek "the new road to Cathay." The Church naturally bestowed its
most earnest benisons upon an enterprise promising unlimited religious
expansion in the realms France might secure across the Atlantic.
Carrier's chief ship was only of one hundred and twenty tons, but the
little fleet crossed the ocean in safety, and on July 9th entered a
large bay south of the St. Lawrence, encountering such intense heats
that it was named the Bay de Chaleurs, being still thus called. After
an extensive examination of the neighboring coasts and bays, Cartier
returned home, reporting that the Canadian summers were as warm as
those of France, but giving no information of the extreme cold of the
winters. This the sun-loving Gauls did not discover until later.
Cartier came back the next year, and sailed up what he had already
named the "Great River," describing it as the most enormous in the
world. The Indians told his wondering sailors "it goes so far that no
man hath ever been to the end that they had heard." The explorers
carefully examined the vast stream, its shores and branches, and were
sure, as they reported, that its sombre tributary, the Saguenay,
"comes from the Sea of Cathay, for in this place there issues a strong
current, and there runs here a terrible tide." They saw numerous
whales and other sea-monsters, but found the water too deep for
soundings, and in fact the river St. Lawrence cannot be sounded for
one hundred and fifty miles up from its mouth.
ITS VAST EXTENT AND FEATURES.
The St. Lawrence is an enormous river, having much the largest estuary
of any river on the globe, the tidal current flowing five hundred
miles up the stream, and its mouth spreading ninety-six miles wide. It
is the outlet of the greatest body of fresh water in existence,
draining seven vast lakes--Nepigon, Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie,
Ontario and Champlain--besides myriads of smaller ones, including the
Central New York lakes, hundreds in the Adirondack forests, and
thousands in the vast Canadian wilderness. The St. Lawrence basin
covers a territory of over four hundred thousand square miles, and has
been computed as containing more than half the fresh water on the
planet. The main St. Lawrence river is seven hundred and fifty miles
long from Lake Ontario to the head of the Gulf, while the total length
of the whole system of lakes and rivers is over two thousand miles,
and has been computed by some patient mathematician to contain a mass
of fresh water equal to twelve thousand cubic miles, of which one
cubic mile goes over Niagara Falls every week. The early geographers
usually located the head of the system in Lake Nepigon, north of
Superior, but it is thought the longer line to the ocean is from the
source of St. Louis River, flowing through Minnesota into the
southwestern extremity of Lake Superior at Duluth. The bigness of the
wonderful St. Lawrence is shown in everything about it. Thoreau, who
was such a keen observer, has written that this great river rises near
another "Father of Waters," the Mississippi, and "issues from a
remarkable spring, far up in the woods, fifteen hundred miles in
circumference," called Lake Superior, while "it makes such a noise in
its tumbling down at one place (Niagara) as is heard all round the
world." The geologists, however, who usually upturn most things,
declare that it did not always reach the sea as now. Originally the
St. Lawrence, they say, flowed into the ocean by going out through the
Narrows in New York harbor, and its immense current broke the passage
through the West Point Highlands in a mighty stream, compared with
which the present Hudson River is a pigmy. Professor Newberry writes
that during countless ages this enormous river, which no human eyes
beheld, carried off the surplus waters of a great drainage area with a
rapid current cutting down its gorge many hundred feet in depth,
reaching from the Lake Superior basin to the Narrows, where it
dispersed in a vast delta, debouching upon a sea then much lower in
level than now, and having its shore-line about eighty miles southeast
of New York. By some stupendous convulsion this channel was changed,
drift banked up the old valley of the Mohawk, and the outflow was
deflected from the northeast corner of Lake Ontario into the present
shallow and rocky channel, filled with islands and rapids, followed by
the St. Lawrence down to Montreal.
The system of navigable water ways from Duluth and Port Arthur on Lake
Superior to the Strait of Belle Isle is twenty-two hundred miles long.
At Lake Ontario the head of the St. Lawrence River is two hundred and
thirty-one feet above the sea level, and its current descends that
distance to tidewater chiefly by going down successive rapids. There
are ship canals around these rapids and around Niagara Falls, and also
connecting various lakes above. The Sault Sainte Marie locks and
canals, at the outlet of Lake Superior, have already been described.
The admirable systems conducting navigation around the rapids in the
river below Lake Ontario also carry a large tonnage. Between
Ogdensburg and Montreal, a distance of about one hundred and twenty
miles, the navigation of forty-three miles is through six canals of
various lengths around the rapids, each having elaborate locks. The
Gulf of St. Lawrence is also constructed upon an enormous scale,
covering eighty thousand square miles, and with the lower river
having a tidal ebb and flow of eighteen to twenty-four feet. The mouth
of the river and head of the Gulf are usually located at Cape Chatte,
far below the Saguenay, and from the Cape almost up to Quebec the
river is ten to thirty miles wide. In front of Quebec it narrows to
less than a mile, while above, the width is from one to two and a half
miles to Montreal, expanding to ten miles at Lake St. Peter, where the
tidal influence ceases. Above Montreal the river occasionally expands
into lakes, but is generally a broad and strongly flowing stream with
frequent rapids. The largest ocean vessels freely ascend to Montreal,
at the head of ship navigation, Lachine rapids being just above the
city. For several months in winter, however, ice prevents.
THE CITY OF TORONTO.
Lake Ontario, out of which the river St. Lawrence flows, is nearly two
hundred miles long, and in some places seventy miles wide. It has
generally low shores and but few islands, and the name given it by
Champlain was Lake St. Louis, after the King of France. The original
Indian name, however, has since been retained, Ontario meaning "how
beautiful is the rock standing in the water." Three well-known
Canadian cities are upon its shores--Hamilton at the western end,
Toronto on the northern coast, and Kingston near the eastern end.
Hamilton is a busy, industrial and commercial city of fifty thousand
people, having a good harbor. The great port, however, is Toronto,
with over two hundred thousand inhabitants, the capital of the
Province of Ontario, and the headquarters of the Scottish and Irish
Protestants, who settled and rule Upper Canada, the richest and most
populous province of the Dominion. Toronto means "the place of
meeting," and the word was first heard in the seventeenth century as
applied to the country of the Hurons, between Lakes Huron and Simcoe,
the name being afterwards given to the Indian portage route, starting
from Lake Ontario, in the present city limits, over to that country.
Here, in 1749, the French established a small trading-post, Fort
Rouille, but there was no settlement to speak of for a century or
more. The United Empire Loyalists, under General Simcoe, founded the
present city in 1793 under the name of York, and it was made the
capital of Upper Canada, of which Simcoe was Governor. The location
was an admirable one. The portage led up a romantic little stream, now
called Humber River, while out in front was an excellent harbor,
protected by a long, low, forest-clad island, making a perfect
land-locked basin, sheltered from the storms of the lake. The nucleus
of a town was thus started on a tract of marshy land, adjoining the
Humber, familiarly known for nearly a half century as "Muddy Little
York," which characteristic a part of the city still retains, as the
pedestrian in falling weather can testify. Yet the site is a pleasing
one--two little rivers, the Humber and the Don, flowing down to the
lake through deep and picturesque ravines, having the city between and
along them, while there is a gradual slope upward to an elevation of
two hundred feet and over at some distance inland, an ancient terrace,
which was the bank of the lake.
The town did not grow much at first, and during the War of 1812 it was
twice captured by the Americans, but they could not hold it long. As
the back country was settled and lake navigation afterwards developed,
however, the harbor became of importance and the city grew, being
finally incorporated as Toronto. Then it got a great impetus and
became known as the "Queen City," its geographical advantages as a
centre of railway as well as water routes attracting a large
immigration, so that it has grown to be the second city in Canada, and
its people hope it may outstrip Montreal and become the first. It has
achieved a high rank commercially, and in religion and education, so
that there are substantial grounds for the claim, often made, that it
is the "Boston of Canada." It contains a church for about every
thousand inhabitants, Sunday is observed with great strictness, and it
has in the University of Toronto the chief educational foundation in
the Dominion, and in the _Toronto Globe_ the leading organ of Canadian
Liberalism. The city spreads for eight miles along the lake shore; the
streets are laid out at right angles, and there are many fine
buildings. Yonge Street, dividing the city, stretches northward from
the harbor forty miles inland to the shore of Lake Simcoe. There are
attractive residential streets, with many ornate dwellings in tasteful
gardens. St. James' Cathedral, near Yonge Street, is a fine Early
English structure, with a noble clock and a grand spire rising three
hundred and sixteen feet. There is a new City Hall, an enormous
Romanesque building with an impressive tower, and Osgoode Hall, the
seat of the Ontario Superior Courts, in Italian Renaissance, its name
being given from the first Chief Justice of Upper Canada. In Queen's
Park are the massive Grecian buildings of the Provincial Parliament,
finished in 1892 at a cost of $1,500,000. This Park contains a bronze
statue of George Brown, long a leading Canadian statesman, and a
monument erected in memory of the men who fell in repelling the Fenian
invasion of 1866.
The buildings of the University of Toronto, to the westward of the
Queen's Park, are extensive and form a magnificent architectural
group. The main building is Norman, with a massive central tower,
rebuilt in 1890, after having been burnt. There are fifteen hundred
students, and the University offers complete courses in the arts and
sciences, law and medicine. To the northward is McMaster Hall, a
Baptist theological college, tastefully constructed and liberally
endowed. From the top of the tall University tower there is an
admirable view over the city and far across the lake. The town
spreads broadly out on either hand, running down to the harbor, beyond
which is the narrow streak made by the low-lying island enclosing it.
Far to the southward stretch the sparkling waters of Ontario, reaching
to the horizon, while in the distance can be seen a faint little
silver cloud of spray rising from Niagara. In the northern background
villas dot the green and wooded hillsides, showing how the city
spreads, while in every direction the incomplete buildings and the
gentle distant noises of the builder's hammer and trowel testify to
its robust growth. Many steamers move about the harbor, and among them
are the ferry-boats carrying crowds over to the low-lying island, with
its many amusement places, the city's great recreation ground. At
Hanlon's Point, its western end, was long the home of Hanlon, the
"champion sculler of the world," one of Toronto's celebrities.
THE LAKE OF THE THOUSAND ISLANDS.
Out of Ontario the great river St. Lawrence flows one hundred and
seventy-two miles down to Montreal, being for much of the distance the
boundary between the United States and Canada. Kingston, with
twenty-five thousand people, guarded by picturesque graystone
batteries and martello towers--the "Limestone City"--stands at the
head of the river where it issues from the lake. To the westward is
the entrance of the spacious Bay of Quinté, and on the eastern side
the terminus of the Rideau Canal, leading northeastward to the Rideau
River and Ottawa, the Canadian capital. This was originally the French
Fort Cataraqui, established at the mouth of Cataraqui River in 1672,
the name being subsequently changed by Count Frontenac to Frontenac.
The Indian word Cataraqui means "Clay bank rising from the water," and
after the fort was built the meaning changed to "fort rising from the
water." Here the Sieur de La Salle, in 1678, built the first vessel
navigating the lake. The British captured the fort in 1762, naming it
Kingston, after the American Revolution, and by fortifying the
promontories commanding the harbor, made it the strongest military
post in Canada after Quebec and Halifax, the chief work being Fort
Henry. Its garrisons have been long withdrawn, however, and now the
old-time forts are useful chiefly as additions to the attractive
scenery of its harbor and approaches. At the outlet of Ontario the
course of the St. Lawrence begins with the noted archipelago known as
the "Lake of the Thousand Islands," there being actually about
seventeen hundred of them. This is a remarkable formation, composed
largely of fragments of the range of Laurentian mountains, here coming
southward out of Canada to the river, producing an extraordinary
region. This Laurentian formation the geologists describe as the
oldest land in the world--"the first rough sketch and axis of
America." During countless ages this range has been worn down by the
effect of rain, frost, snow and rivers, and scratched and broken by
rough, resistless glaciers, and we are told that, compared with these
fragmentary "Thousand Islands" and the almost worn-out mountains of
the lower St. Lawrence basin, the Alps and the Andes are but creations
of yesterday.
Wolfe Island broadly obstructs the Ontario outlet between Kingston and
Cape Vincent on the New York shore, and from them, with an
island-filled channel, in some places twelve miles broad, the swift
river current threads the archipelago by pleasant and tortuous
passages nearly to Ogdensburg, forty miles below. These islands are of
all sizes, shapes and appearance, varying from small low rocks and
gaunt crags to gorgeous foliage-covered gardens. On account of their
large numbers, the early French explorers named them "Les Milles
Isles," and in the ancient chronicles they are described as
"obstructing navigation and mystifying the most experienced Iroquois
pilots." Fenimore Cooper located some of the most interesting
incidents of his _Pathfinder_ in "that labyrinth of land and water,
the Thousand Isles." The larger islands in spring and summer are
generally covered with luxuriant vegetation, and the river shores are
a delicious landscape of low but bold bluffs and fruitful fields
spreading down to the water, with distant forests bounding the
horizon. The atmosphere is usually dry, light and mellow, and the
Indians, who admired this attractive region, appropriately called it
Manatoana, or the "Garden of the Great Spirit." Howe Island adjoins
Wolfe Island, and below is the long Grindstone Island. Here on the New
York shore is the village of Clayton, where the New York Central
Railroad comes up from Utica and Rome, the leading route to this
region. Below is the almost circular Round Island with its large
hotel, and everywhere are charming little islets, while ahead, down
the St. Lawrence, are myriads more islands, apparently massed together
in a maze of dark green distant foliage, the enchanted isles of a
fascinating summer sea:
"The Thousand Isles, the Thousand Isles,
Dimpled, the wave around them smiles,
Kissed by a thousand red-lipped flowers,
Gemmed by a thousand emerald bowers.
A thousand birds their praises wake,
By rocky glade and plumy brake.
A thousand cedars' fragrant shade
Falls where the Indians' children played,
And Fancy's dream my heart beguiles
While singing of thee, Thousand Isles.
"There St. Lawrence gentlest flows,
There the south wind softest blows.
Titian alone hath power to paint
The triumph of their patron saint
Whose waves return on memory's tide;
La Salle and Piquet, side by side,
Proud Frontenac and bold Champlain
There act their wanderings o'er again;
And while the golden sunlight smiles,
Pilgrims shall greet thee, Thousand Isles."
[Illustration: _In the Thousand Islands, St. Lawrence_]
Sailing down the river, group after group of big and little green
islands are passed, the winding route and tortuous channels marked by
diminutive lighthouses and beacons, while nearly every island has its
cottages and often ornate and elaborate villas. Everywhere the shores
appear to be granite rocks, bright green foliage varying with the
darker evergreens surmounting them. All the waters are brilliantly
green and clear as crystal, rippled by breezes laden with balsamic
odors from the adjacent forests. Attractive cottages everywhere
appear, with little attendant boat-houses down by the water side, and
canoes and skiffs are in limitless supply, as the chief travelling is
by them. Everything seems to be full of life; in all directions are
pleasant views, the surface is dotted with pleasure-boats and
white-sailed yachts, the whole region being semi-amphibious, and its
people spending as much time on the water as on the land. The river,
too, is a great highway of commerce among these islands, many large
vessels passing along, and timber rafts guided by puffing little tugs.
Much of the product of the Canadian forests is thus taken to market, a
good deal going to Europe, and the sentimental and often musical
Metis, who live aboard in huts or tents, are the raftsmen, working the
broad sails and big steering-paddles on the tedious floating journey
down to Quebec. There are many large hotels, and the big one on Round
Island is named for Louis XIV.'s chivalrous and fiery Governor of
Canada, Count de Frontenac. His remains are buried in the Basilica at
Quebec, and his heart, enclosed in a leaden casket, was sent home to
his widow in France. She was much younger, and, evidently piqued at
some of his alleged love affairs, refused to receive it, saying she
would not have a dead heart which had not been hers while living. The
Baptists have a summer settlement on Round Island, and a short
distance below the extensive Wellesley Island has on its upper end the
popular Methodist summer town of the Thousand Island Park, where
little cottages and tents around the great Tabernacle often take care
of ten thousand people. Upon the lower end the Presbyterians have
established their attractive resort, Westminster Park, which faces
Alexandria Bay.
ALEXANDRIA BAY.
The chief settlement of the archipelago is the village of Alexandria
Bay on the New York shore, and in the spacious reach of the river in
front are the most famous and costly of the island cottages. Here are
large hotels and many lodging-places, with a swelling population in
the height of the season. Some of the island structures are
unique--tall castles, palaces, imitations of iron-clads, forts and
turrets--and many have been very costly. As most of the summer
residents are Americans, those cottages are chiefly on the American
side of the boundary, but there is also quite a group of island
cottages over near the Canadian shore adjacent to the village of
Gananoque. Alexandria Bay is a diminutive indentation in the New York
shore, with a little red lighthouse out in front, while over to the
northeast is spread a galaxy of the most famous islands, having fifty
or more pretentious cottages scattered about the scene, amid the green
foliage surmounting the rocky island foundations. In every direction
go off channels among them of sparkling, dancing, green water, giving
fine vista views, the dark crags at the water's edge underlying the
frame of green foliage bounding the picture. The population has an
aquatic flavor, and everybody seems to go about in boats, while the
place has the air of a purely pleasure resort, evidently frozen up and
hybernating when the tide of summer travel ebbs. In the season, the
village presents a nightly carnival with its many-colored lights and
dazzling fireworks displays over the rippling waters. For miles below
Alexandria Bay, the islands stud the waters, although not so numerous
nor so closely together as they are above. The largest of these is the
long and narrow Grenadier Island in mid-river. Farther down they are
usually small, some being only isolated rocks almost awash. The last
of the islands are at Brockville, twenty-five miles below Alexandria
Bay--the group of "Three Sisters," one large and two smaller,
apparently dropped into the river opposite the town as if intended to
support the piers of a bridge over to Morristown on the New York
shore. This is an old and quiet Canadian town of nine thousand people,
perpetuating the memory of General Sir Isaac Brock, who fell in the
battle of Queenston Heights in October, 1812, and which is developing
into a summer resort. Such is the charmed archipelago of attractive
islands, unlike almost anything else in America, which brings so many
pleasure and health seekers to the St. Lawrence to sing its praises:
"Fair St. Lawrence! What poet has sung of its grace
As it sleeps in the sun, with its smile-dimpled face
Beaming up to the sky that it mirrors! What brush
Has e'er pictured the charm of the marvellous hush
Of its silence; or caught the warm glow of its tints
As the afternoon wanes, and the even-star glints
In its beautiful depths? And what pen shall betray
The sweet secrets that hide from men's vision away
In its solitude wild? 'Tis the river of dreams;
You may float in your boat on the bloom-bordered streams,
Where its islands like emeralds matchless are set,
And forget that you live; and as quickly forget
That they die in the world you have left; for the calm
Of content is within you, the blessing of balm
Is upon you forever."
SHOOTING THE RAPIDS.
Ogdensburg is an active port on the St. Lawrence about twenty miles
below Brockville, having a railroad through the Adirondacks over to
Rouse's Point on Lake Champlain. Here flow in the dark-brown waters
of the Oswegatchie, the Indian "Black River," coming out of those
forests, which commingle in sharp contrast with the clear green
current of the greater river. Prescott, antiquated and time-worn, is
on the Canadian bank. The shores are generally low, with patches of
woodland and farms, and the St. Lawrence below Ogdensburg begins to go
down the rapids, having tranquil lakes and long wide stretches of
placid waters intervening. The first rapid is the "Galop," flowing
among flat grass-covered islands, with swift moving waters, but a
small affair, scarcely discernible as the steamboat goes through it.
The next one, the "Plat," is also passed without much trouble, and
then a line of whitecaps ahead indicates the beginning of the "Long
Sault," the most extensive rapid on the river. This is the "Long
Leap," a rapid running for nine miles, its waters rushing down the
rocky ledges at a speed of twenty miles an hour. All steam is shut
off, and the river steamer is carried along by the movement of the
seething, roaring current, the surface appearing much like the ocean
in a storm. The rocking, sinking deck beneath one's feet gives a
strange and startling sensation, and looking back at the incline down
which the boat is sliding, it seems like a great angry wall of water
chasing along from behind. An elongated island divides the channel
through the "Long Sault," and there are other low islands adjacent;
the boat, swaying among the rocks over which the waves leap in fury,
being now lifted on their crests, and then dropped between them, but
all the while gliding down hill, until still water and safety are
reached at Cornwall. Here begins the northern boundary of New York,
which goes due east through the Chateaugay forests across the land to
Lake Champlain, and large factories front the river, getting their
power from the waters above the rapid.
Below Cornwall, which has an industrial population of some seven
thousand, and the Indian village of St. Regis opposite, the St.
Lawrence is wholly within Canada, and far off to the southeast rise
the dark and distant Adirondack ranges. Soon the river broadens into
the sluggish Lake St. Francis, at the head of which two well-known
Adirondack streams flow in, the Racquette and St. Regis Rivers. The
ancient village of St. Regis has its old church standing up
conspicuously with a bright tin roof, for the air is so dry that tin
is not painted in the Dominion. The bell hanging in the spire was sent
out from France for the early Indian mission, but before landing, the
vessel carrying it was captured by a colonial privateer and taken into
Salem, Massachusetts. The bell, with other booty from the prize, was
sold and sent to a church in Deerfield, then on the Massachusetts
frontier. The St. Regis Huron Indians heard of this, and making a long
march down there, recaptured their bell, massacred forty-seven people,
and carried all the rest who could not escape, one hundred and twenty
of them, including the church pastor and his family, captives back to
Canada. Thus they brought the bell in triumph to St. Regis, and it has
since hung undisturbed in the steeple, although the Indians who now
hear it have become very few. The lake is twenty-eight miles long and
very monotonous, although a distinguishing landmark is furnished by
the massive buildings of St. Aniset Church, seen from afar on the
southern shore.
Coteau, at the end of the lake, has a railway swinging drawbridge,
carrying the Canada Atlantic Railroad over, and below is another
series of rapids. These are the "Coteau," with about two miles of
swift current, making but slight impression; and then the "Cedars,"
"Split Rock," and the "Cascades." The "Cedars" give a sensation, being
composed of layers of rock down which the boat slides, as if settling
from one ledge suddenly down to another, producing a curious feeling.
It was here, in 1759, that General Amherst, by a sad mishap, had three
hundred troops drowned. The "Split Rock" rapid is named from enormous
boulders standing at its entrance, and a dangerous reef can be
distinctly seen from the deck as the steamer apparently runs directly
upon it, until the pilot swerves the boat aside, seemingly just in
time. Then, tossing for a few moments upon the white-crested waves of
the "Cascades," the steamer glides peacefully upon the tranquil
surface of Lake St. Louis, which is fifteen miles long, and receives
from the north the Ottawa River. Each little village on the banks of
the lake and rivers is conspicuous from the large Roman Catholic
Church around which it clusters, the steep bright tin roof and spire
far out-topping all the other buildings. At the lower end of the lake
a series of light-ships guide vessels into Lachine Canal, which goes
down to Montreal, avoiding Lachine rapids, three miles long, the
shortest series, but most violent of them all. Here, at the head of
the rapids, stood the early French explorer, sent out to search for
"the road to Cathay," and looking over the great lake spread out
before him, with a view like old ocean, he shouted "La Chine!" for he
thought that China was beyond it. The Canadian Pacific Railway bridge
spans the river, and skirting the southern shore is the Indian town of
Caughnawaga, with its little old houses and light stone church, the
"village on the rapids." The steamboat then slides down Lachine
rapids, the most difficult and dangerous passage of all, though it
lasts but a few minutes--the exciting inclined plane of water, with
rocks ahead and rocks beneath, indicated by swift and foaming
cataracts running over and between them, and by stout thumps against
the keel, sometimes making every timber shiver, and the apparent
danger giving keen zest to the termination of the voyage. These rapids
passed, the current below quickly floats the steamboat under the great
Victoria tubular bridge, carrying the Grand Trunk Railway over, and
the broad stone quays of Montreal are spread along the bank, with rank
after rank of noble buildings behind them, and the tall twin towers of
Notre Dame Cathedral rising beyond, glistening under the rays of the
setting sun.
THE CITY OF MONTREAL.
The delta of the great Ottawa--the "river of the traders," as the
Indians named it, debouching by several mouths into the St. Lawrence,
of which it is the chief tributary, makes a number of islands, and
Montreal stands on the southeastern side of the largest of them, with
the broad river flowing in front. St. Mary's current runs strongly
past the quays, and out there are the pretty wooded mounds of St.
Helen's Island, named after Helen Boullé, the child-wife of Samuel de
Champlain, the first European woman who came to Canada. She was only
twelve years old when he married her, he being aged forty-four, and
after his death she became an Ursuline nun. The miles of city
water-front are superbly faced with long-walled quays of solid
limestone masonry, and marked by jutting piers enclosing basins for
the protection of the shipping against the powerful current. At the
extremities of the rows of shipping, on either hand, up and down
stream, loom the huge grain elevators. The piers are about ten feet
lower than the walled embankment fronting the city, this being done to
allow the ice to pass over them when it breaks up at the end of
winter, the movement--called the "Ice Shove"--being an imposing sight.
The elongated Victoria Bridge stands upon its row of gray limestone
piers guarding the horizon up-river to the southward. Many storehouses
and stately buildings rise behind the wharves, and beyond these are
myriads of steeples, spires and domes, with the lofty Notre Dame
towers in front. The background is made by the imposing mountain
giving Montreal its name, called Mont Real originally, and now known
as Mount Royal, rising to an elevation of nine hundred feet. Few
cities of its size can boast so many fine buildings. The excellent
building-stone of the neighborhood, a gray limestone, is utilized
extensively, and this adds to the ornamental appearance, the city
rising upon a series of terraces stretching back from the river and
giving many good sites for construction. Numerous, massive and
elaborate, the multitude of costly houses devoted to religion, trade
and private residences are both a surprise and a charm. Mount Royal,
rising boldly behind them, gives not only a noble background to the
view from the river, but also a grand point of outlook, displaying
their beauties to the utmost. The city has wide streets, generally
lined with trees, and various public squares adding to the
attractiveness.
But the most prominent characteristic of the Canadian metropolis is
the astonishing number of its convents, churches, and pious houses
for religious and charitable uses. Churches are everywhere, built by
all denominations, many being most elaborate and costly. The religious
zeal of the community, holding all kinds of ecclesiastical belief, has
found special vent in the universal development of church building.
This commendable trait is their natural heritage, for the earliest
French settlements on the St. Lawrence were largely due to religious
zeal. When Jacques Cartier ascended the St. Lawrence upon his second
voyage in 1535, he heard from the Indians at Quebec of a greater town
far up the river, and bent upon exploration, he sailed in boats up to
the Iroquois settlement of Hochelaga. Wrapped in forests behind it
rose the great mountain which he named Mont Real, the "royal
mountain," and in front, encompassed with corn-fields, was the Indian
village, surrounded by triple rows of palisades. Landing, Cartier's
party were admitted within the defensive walls to the central public
square, where the squaws examined them with the greatest curiosity,
and the sick and lame Indians were brought up to be healed, the
ancient historian writes, "as if a god had come down among them." No
sooner had Cartier landed and been thus welcomed than he gave thanks
to Heaven, and the warriors sat in silence while he read aloud the
Passion of Our Lord, though they understood not a word. The religious
services over, he distributed presents, and the French trumpeters
sounded a warlike melody, vastly pleasing the Indians. They conducted
Cartier's party to the summit of the mountain and showed them an
extensive view over unbroken forests for many miles to the dark
Adirondacks far away and the distant lighter green mountains, which he
called the "Monts Verts," to the eastward. There is a tablet placed in
Metcalfe Street near Sherbrooke Street which marks the supposed site
of the Indian village of Hochelaga. In 1608, when Champlain came,
Hochelaga had disappeared. The fierce Hurons had destroyed the village
and driven out the Iroquois, who had gone far south to the Mohawk
Valley.
For three-quarters of a century the French seem to have waited after
Cartier's voyages, before they made any serious attempt at settlement.
Then there came a great religious revival, and they planned to combine
religion and conquest in a series of expeditions in the early
seventeenth century under the auspices of patron saints and sinners
whose names are numerously reproduced in the nomenclature of Quebec
Province, in mountains, rivers, lakes, bays, capes, counties, towns
and streets. It was chiefly due to Champlain, however, that the French
foothold was obtained. This great explorer, known as the "Father of
Canada," was noted alike for personal bravery and religious fervor.
His occupations in the New World were perilous journeys, prayers and
fighting. He firmly planted the French race in America, and every
characteristic then given "New France," as Canada was called, remains
to-day in the Province of Quebec. His noted saying is preserved in the
Canadian chronicles, that "the salvation of one soul is of more
importance than the founding of a new empire." His system was to take
possession for the Church and the French king, and then erect a cross
and a chapel, around which the colony grew. During the half-century
succeeding Champlain's first voyage, many Recollet and Jesuit
missionary priests came over, traversing the country and making
converts among the Indians, so that there were established
settlements, half-religious and half-military, forming alliances with
the neighboring Huron and Algonquin Indians, and ultimately waging the
almost perpetual wars with their English and Iroquois foes to the
southward. Champlain, in 1608, founded Quebec, where Cartier had
previously discovered the Indian village of Stadacona, meaning the
"narrowing of the river." Champlain also, in subsequent voyages,
discovered Lakes Champlain, Ontario and Nipissing.
RELIGIOUS FOUNDATION OF MONTREAL.
The original settlement of Montreal was probably the most completely
religious enterprise of the many early French colonizing expeditions
to Canada. Dauversière, a tax-gatherer of Anjou, was a religious
devotee whose constant scourging with small chains and other
torments, including a belt with more than twelve hundred sharp points,
filled his father confessor with admiration. One day while at his
devotions, an inward voice commanded him to found a new order of
hospital nuns, and establish at the island called Mont Real in Canada
a hospital or Hotel-Dieu for these nuns to conduct. But Mont Real
being a wilderness where the hospital would be without patients, the
island must be colonized to supply them, and the pious tax-gatherer
was sorely perplexed. There was in Paris a young priest, Jean Jacques
Olier, who was zealous and devout, and signalized his piety by much
self-mortification, and one day while praying in church he thought he
heard a voice from Heaven saying he was destined to be a light to the
Gentiles, and that he was to form a society of priests and establish
them on the island called Mont Real, in Canada, for the propagation of
the true Faith. The old writers solemnly aver that both these men were
totally ignorant of each other and of Canadian geography, yet they
suddenly found themselves possessed, they knew not how, of the most
exact details concerning the island, its size, shape, soil,
productions, climate and situation; and they subsequently saw
apparitions of the Virgin and the Saviour encouraging them in the
great work. Dauversière went to Paris seeking aid to carry out his
task, and met Olier in a chateau in the suburbs; the two men, who
never before had seen or heard of each other, became at once
familiar, and under holy inspiration fondly embraced each other; the
tax-gatherer received communion at the hands of the priest; and then
for three hours they walked together in the park forming their plans.
They determined, as the pious chronicler records it, to "plant the
banner of Christ in an abode of desolation and a haunt of demons, and
to this end a band of priests and women were to invade the wilderness
and take post between the fangs of the Iroquois." They believed in the
mystic number, three, and proposed to found three religious
communities--one of secular priests to direct the colonists and
convert the Indians, one of nuns to nurse the sick, and one of nuns to
teach the Faith to all the children, white and red.
But money and men and women were necessary for the work. Soon, four
others were found who had wealth, and the six formed the germ of the
"Society of Notre Dame de Montreal," and among them seventy-five
thousand livres were raised, equal to about as many dollars. They
purchased the island, and their grant was confirmed by the king, and
then they got together a colony of forty men, and needing a
soldier-governor, Providence provided such a man in Paul de Chomedey,
Sieur de Maisonneuve, a devout and valiant gentleman who had kept his
faith intact, notwithstanding long service among the heretics of
Holland, and loving his profession of arms, wished to consecrate his
sword to the Church. The interest of the women was awakened, and
ultimately the Society was increased to about forty-five persons,
chosen for their devotion and their wealth. Among the women who
founded the new colony was Mademoiselle Jeanne Mance, who was about
thirty-four years of age when the Society was organized, and to whom
we are told that Christ had appeared in a vision at the early age of
seven years, and at the same tender age her biographer says she had
bound herself to God by a vow of perpetual chastity. Mlle. Mance, by
the divine inspiration, was filled with a longing to go to Canada, and
she went to the port of Rochelle seeking a vessel. She had never
before heard of Dauversière, but by supernatural agencies she met him
coming out of church, had a long conversation in which she learned his
plan, declared she had found her destiny in "the ocean, the
wilderness, the solitude, the Iroquois," and at once decided to go
with Maisonneuve and his party.
In February, 1641, with the Abbé Olier at their head, all the
associates of the Society assembled in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, in
Paris, before the altar of the Virgin, and by a most solemn ceremonial
consecrated Mont Real to the Holy Family. It was henceforth to be a
sacred town, called "Ville Marie de Montreal," and consecrated
respectively, the Seminary of priests to Christ, the Hotel-Dieu to St.
Joseph, and the Nuns' College to the Virgin. Subsequently to the
colonization there appeared, in 1653, as the head of the latter, a
maiden of Troyes, Marguerite Bourgeoys, a woman of most excellent good
sense and a warm heart, who is described as having known neither
miracles, ecstasies nor trances, her religion being of the affections
and manifested in an absorbing devotion to duty. Late in the year the
colony under Maisonneuve set sail, arriving too late, however, to
ascend the St. Lawrence above Quebec, where they wintered. Here the
Governor of Quebec, Montmagny, tried his best to dissuade them from
going farther, desiring them to settle at Quebec, but Maisonneuve
said, "It is my duty and my honor to found a colony at Montreal, and I
would go if every tree were an Iroquois!" Here they gained an
unexpected recruit in Madame de la Peltrie, foundress of the Order of
Ursulines at Quebec, who abandoned their convent and carried off all
the furniture she had lent them. In May, 1642, the party left Quebec
in a flotilla of boats, deep laden with men, arms and stores, and a
few days later approached Montreal island, when all on board raised a
hymn of praise. Montmagny, who was to deliver possession of the
island, was with them, and also Father Vimont, Superior of the
missions, for the Jesuits had been invited to take spiritual charge of
the young colony. On May 18, 1642, they landed at Montreal, at a spot
where a little creek then flowed into the St. Lawrence, making a good
landing-place, protected from the influence of the swift current of
the river. There was a bordering meadow, and beyond rose the forest
with its vanguard of scattered trees. The triangular graystone
building, which is now the Custom House, down by the river, marks this
spot where the city was founded. The historian Parkman, who has so
faithfully delved into the ancient Canadian archives, thus relates the
story of the original settlement:
"Maisonneuve sprang ashore and fell on his knees. His followers
imitated his example, and all joined their voices in enthusiastic
songs of thanksgiving. Tents, baggage, arms and stores were landed. An
altar was raised on a pleasant spot near at hand; and Mademoiselle
Mance, with Madame de la Peltrie, aided by her servant Charlotte
Barré, decorated it with a taste which was the admiration of the
beholders. Now all the company gathered before the shrine. Here stood
Vimont in the rich vestments of his office. Here were the two ladies
with their servant; Montmagny, no very willing spectator; and
Maisonneuve, a warlike figure, erect and tall, his men clustering
around him,--soldiers, sailors, artisans and laborers,--all alike
soldiers at need. They kneeled in reverent silence as the Host was
raised aloft; and when the rite was over the priest turned and
addressed them: 'You are a grain of mustard-seed, that shall rise and
grow till its branches overshadow the earth. You are few, but your
work is the work of God. His smile is on you, and your children shall
fill the land.' The afternoon waned; the sun sank behind the western
forest, and twilight came on. Fireflies were twinkling over the
darkened meadow. They caught them, tied them with threads into shining
festoons, and hung them before the altar where the Host remained
exposed. Then they pitched their tents, lighted their bivouac fires,
stationed their guards, and lay down to rest. Such was the birth-night
of Montreal." Thus was piously planted the "grain of mustard-seed" of
the devout and enthusiastic Vimont, which has expanded into a great
city of probably three hundred thousand people, over half of them
French and more than three-fourths Catholics, there being also a large
Irish population.
MONTREAL INSTITUTIONS.
Montreal covers a surface five miles long by two miles wide, and its
situation gives it great commercial importance. The people call it
"the Queen of the St. Lawrence," standing at the head of ship
navigation, where cargoes are exchanged with the internal canal and
lake navigation system, the Grand Trunk Railway and the Canadian
Pacific Railway crossing the continent, and both also having many
connections with the United States. In 1809, the "Accommodation," the
second steamboat in America, was built in Montreal, and began running
to Quebec. The lion of Montreal is the Victoria Tubular Bridge, which
was formally opened by the Prince of Wales on his American visit in
1860. It was designed by Robert Stephenson and built by James Hodges
at a cost of over $6,000,000. It is nearly ninety-two hundred feet
long and stands upon twenty-six piers and abutments, the centre being
about sixty feet above the summer level of the river, which flows
beneath at the rate of seven miles an hour. Elaborate ice-fenders are
on the up-stream side of the piers, there being an enormous
ice-pressure when the spring freshets are running. It is the greatest
bridge in the Dominion, and near it stands a huge boulder, marking the
burial-place of the army of Irish emigrants who came over in 1847,
sixty-five hundred dying at Montreal of ship-fever.
The Sulpician Order has always been the great educator of priests in
all French-speaking peoples, and it was founded by the Abbé Olier.
Carrying out his intention, the "Seminary of St. Sulpice" was opened
in Montreal in 1647. This is now an enormous and prosperous religious
establishment, holding large possessions in and around the city. The
"Gentlemen of the Seminary," as the members of the Order of Sulpicians
are called in Montreal, are the successors of the first owners of the
island, and they conduct a large secular business as landlords. Down
in the heart of the old city, at the Place d'Armes, they have an
antique quadrangle, surrounding a quiet garden, which is the official
headquarters, and was the location of their ancient house. The curious
French-looking towers fronting the Seminary were at one time
loop-holed for musketry, and were garrisoned, when necessary, to beat
off Indian raids upon the infant settlement. In the western suburbs
there is a broad domain, known as the "Priests' Farm," where are an
elaborate mass of buildings, making their present noted foundation,
the "Great Seminary" and Montreal College, the former for the
education of priests and the latter for the general education of
youth, the delicious surrounding gardens being regarded as the finest
on the fertile island.
The "Hospital of the Hotel-Dieu de Ville Marie" is on the northeastern
edge of the city, almost under the shadow of the mountain, and is one
of the largest buildings in Canada, its dome rising one hundred and
fifty feet over the spacious chapel. It was in this hospital, when
first founded in a small way in 1647, that Mademoiselle Mance took up
her abode. There are now over five hundred persons in the building,
and it is conducted by eighty cloistered nuns, who never go outside
the grounds. They are of the Order of St. Joseph, caring for the sick,
the orphan, and the old and infirm. The "Sisters of the Congregation
of Notre Dame," the "Black Nuns," as they are called, have their
Mother House in Montreal, this being the teaching order founded by
Marguerite Bourgeoys in 1653, she having then come out to Canada with
Maisonneuve on his second voyage. "To this day," writes Parkman, "in
crowded schoolrooms of Montreal and Quebec, fit monuments of her
unobtrusive virtue, her successors instruct the children of the poor
and embalm the pleasant memory of Marguerite Bourgeoys. In the martial
figure of Maisonneuve, and the fair form of this gentle nun, we find
the true heroes of Montreal." These "Black Nuns" conduct seventeen
schools in the city, with over five thousand pupils. Their most
extensive establishment is just out of town, on what are known as the
"Monk Lands," and is called "Ville Marie." There are no less than six
hundred nuns and novices in this order, and their pupils number twenty
thousand in Canada and the United States.
Another important Montreal institution is the "General Hospital of the
Grey Sisters," popularly known as the "Grey Nunnery," occupying an
extensive array of stone buildings in the southwestern part of the
city. This order was first founded in 1692, but languished for nearly
a half century, when a pious Canadian lady took it up. Originally it
cared for the aged and infirm, but in 1755 this lady, Madame de
Youville, discovered the body of a murdered infant, where is now
Foundling Street, then a stream of water, into which the child had
been thrown, and this led her to extend the objects of the institution
so as to embrace orphans and foundlings. This is the great foundling
hospital of Montreal. The order has the revenues of large estates, and
there are about four hundred nuns and novices, over half being
detailed in a large number of establishments throughout Canada.
Several hundred foundlings are received every year, and over five
hundred patients are cared for in Montreal, mostly the aged and
infirm. The daughter of Ethan Allen, of Vermont, was a nun of this
order, dying in 1819. This nunnery has many visitors, who attend
worship with the Sisters in the beautiful chapel, and then go through
the hospital, where the poor are cared for both in the morning and the
evening of life. The crowds of little French children, dressed in the
curious clothing of past centuries, sing for their visitors, and then
comically scramble for the small coins tossed among them, which, after
doing duty as playthings for a brief time, find their way into the
charity box.
Montreal is the headquarters in America of the well-known teaching
order of the Christian Brothers. The Jesuits have St. Mary's College;
and the Convent of the Sacred Heart and Hochelaga Convent, the Asylum
of the Sisters of Providence and the Convent of the Good Shepherd are
also prominent. The chief Protestant educational institution is McGill
University, with a thousand students and seventy-five instructors,
originally founded in 1821, through a bequest of $150,000, by James
McGill, a native of Glasgow, who was one of the early successful
merchants of Montreal. It has since been richly endowed, its
properties being valued at over $1,000,000, and it has fine buildings
and grounds near the mountain. Closely affiliated is the Presbyterian
College of Montreal, devoted to the training of missionaries and
clergymen, also provided with noble buildings. There is also a
Wesleyan Theological College affiliated with McGill University. The
peculiar religious conditions of Quebec Province have vested the
educational management of the public schools in two Boards, one
Protestant and the other Roman Catholic, separately governing each
class of schools, and working in harmony under the Provincial
Superintendent of Education, each Board having an office in Montreal.
MONTREAL CHURCHES AND BUILDINGS.
The Place d'Armes, down in the old part of the city, where is the
original Seminary of St. Sulpice, is surrounded by famous structures.
Here are the chief banks and insurance buildings and the head office
of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The most noted of them is the
Grecian-fronted Bank of Montreal, the largest financial institution in
Canada, and believed, with the Canadian Pacific management, who are
closely connected, to be the most potential force in the Dominion.
Adjoining the old Seminary, and facing the square, is Montreal's most
famous church--Notre Dame--its lofty front rising into the twin spires
that overlook all the country round. Its pews seat ten thousand, and
when crowded it accommodates fifteen thousand people. In one of the
towers hangs "Le Gros Bourdon," the largest bell in America, called
Jean Baptiste, and weighing nearly fifteen tons. The church is
mediæval Gothic, built of cut limestone, the spires rising two hundred
and twenty-seven feet, and containing ten bells, making a chime upon
which, on great occasions, tunes are played. The interior, like all
the French Catholic churches, is brilliantly decorated, for the
religious development is the same as that of France in the seventeenth
century, everything contributing to the intensity of the devotion and
the elaborateness of decoration and paraphernalia of the service. At
High Mass, when crowded by worshippers, the choir filled with robed
ecclesiastics officiating in the stately ceremonial, the effect is
imposing. The original church of Notre Dame was built in 1671, a long,
low structure with a high pitched roof. It was pulled down in 1824 and
replaced by the present church, which was five years building, and is
one of the largest churches in America, two hundred and fifty-five
feet long. We are told that the architect, James O'Donnell, who is
buried in the crypt, was a Protestant, but during the work became so
impressed by his religious surroundings that he was converted to a
Roman Catholic. The church is never closed, and at any time one can
enter, and with the silent worshippers kneel at the shrine in a solemn
stillness, in sharp contrast with the activity of the business quarter
without. This remarkable contrast deeply impressed the ascetic
Thoreau, whose boast was that he never attended church. "I soon found
my way to the Church of Notre Dame," he writes. "I saw that it was of
great size and signified something. Coming from the hurrahing mob and
the rattling carriages, we pushed back the listed door of this church
and found ourselves instantly in an atmosphere which might be sacred
to thought and religion, if one had any. It was a great cave in the
midst of a city, and what were the altars and the tinsel but the
sparkling stalactites into which you entered in a moment, and where
the still atmosphere and the sombre light disposed to serious and
profitable thought? Such a cave at hand, which you can enter any day,
is worth a thousand of our churches which are open only Sundays." When
General Montgomery's American army captured Montreal in 1775, the
square in front of Notre Dame was his parade-ground, and thus it got
the name of Place d'Armes.
The greatest church of Montreal is the new Cathedral of St. James,
popularly known as St. Peter's, as yet incomplete, designed to
reproduce, on a scale of one-half the dimensions, the grand Basilica
at Rome. It is three hundred and thirty-three feet long, the transepts
two hundred and twenty-five feet wide, and the stone dome two hundred
and fifty feet high, making it the largest church in Canada. Four huge
stone piers, each thirty-six feet thick, and thirty-two Corinthian
columns, support this grand dome. The outside walls, built of the
universal gray limestone, are massive but rough, and the roof, on
account of the heavy snows, is sloping, but otherwise it reproduces
all the special features of St. Peter's at Rome, including the
portico, to be surmounted by colossal statues of the Apostles. The
interior is being decorated with brilliant paintings representing
scenes in the life of St. James. It is located on Dominion Square, and
the Bishop's Palace adjoins it. One of the remarkable churches, though
small, is Notre Dame de Lourdes, built and adorned with the single
idea of expressing in visible form the dogma of the Immaculate
Conception, with the appearance of the Virgin to the maiden in the
grotto at Lourdes. It is superbly decorated, and is the only church of
the kind in America, being well described as "like an illuminated
Missal, which to a Protestant has interest as a work of art, and to a
Catholic has the superadded interest of a work of devotion." Adjoining
the Jesuit St. Mary's College is their solid stone Church of the Gesu,
its lofty nave bounded by rich columns, and with the long transepts
adorned by fine frescoes, some giving representations of scenes in
Jesuit history and martyrdom. The great Episcopal Cathedral of Christ
Church, a Latin cross in Early English architecture, reproduces the
Salisbury Cathedral of England, with a spire two hundred and
twenty-four feet high. There are also many other fine Protestant
churches; and when it is realized that Montreal has a church for about
every two thousand inhabitants, the care for its religious welfare
will be realized. The Royal Victoria Hospital, a gift to the city in
honor of the Queen's Jubilee, cost $1,000,000.
The largest public square in the city is the Champ de Mars, formerly a
parade-ground, adjoining which are two noble public buildings, the
handsome Court-house, three hundred feet long, and the adjacent Hotel
de Ville, nearly five hundred feet long. The Victoria Skating Rink,
the largest in the world, is the most noted amusement structure. The
city is noted for athletic sports, and toboggan slides abound, some of
enormous length, down the mountain slopes. The Montreal Bonsecours
Market is famed everywhere, and presents an imposing Doric front
nearly five hundred feet long upon the river bank, surmounted by a
domed tower. Here gather in force the French Canadian peasantry, known
as the _habitans_, to sell their produce and wares, and it gives a
quaint exhibition of old-time French customs. The ancient Church of
Notre Dame de Bonsecours is alongside, originally founded by
Marguerite Bourgeoys in 1673 for the reception of a miraculous statue
of the Virgin, entrusted to her by one of the associates of the
Society founding Montreal, Baron de Faucamp. The church was burnt and
then rebuilt in 1771, and is a quaint structure of a style rarely seen
outside of Normandy, having shops built up against it after the
fashion common in old European towns. Thus does this famous city
combine the methods and styles of the Middle Ages with the manners and
enterprises of to-day. It is an impressive fact that notwithstanding
the prodigious religious development, all the denominations get on
without friction. There is an underlying spirit of toleration, and it
is recorded that after the British conquest of Canada the Protestants
who came into Montreal occupied one of the Catholic churches for
worship, assembling after the Catholic morning mass; and that for
twenty years after 1766 the Church of England people occupied the
Catholic church of the Recollets every Sunday afternoon. The
Presbyterians are said to have also used the same church prior to
1792, and then having removed into a church of their own, they
presented the priests of the Recollet church a gift of candles for the
high altar and of wine for the mass as a token of good will and their
thanks for the gratuitous use of the church. Then the churches were
few, but now all denominations have their own, and numerously.
MONTREAL SURROUNDINGS.
The suburbs are attractive, and gradually dissolve into the gardens
and farms of the French husbandmen, living in comfortable houses with
steep roofs, fronted by and sometimes almost embedded in foliage and
flowers. Occasionally an ancient windmill is perched on a hill,
stretching out its broad gyrating sails, as in old Normandy. There are
frequent villages along the St. Lawrence, each clustered around its
church. At Caughnawaga, already referred to, there is an extensive
church with a tall and shining white tin-covered spire, and in a
rather sorry-looking group of houses around it live the few who are
left of the descendants of the once warlike and powerful Mohawks,
known as the "praying Indians," here long ago gathered by the zealous
missionary priests of St. Sulpice. At Lachine, spreading opposite on
the western shore of the St. Lawrence for several miles, is a popular
place of suburban residence, with rows of pleasant villas lining the
banks of Lake St. Louis. Over beyond this lake comes in the main
channel of Ottawa River, with the rapids of St. Anne flowing down from
another inland sea made by its prolonged enlargement, the "Lake of the
Two Mountains." A canal flanks these rapids, and the village of St.
Anne has grown around its ancient church, which is deeply reverenced
by the Canadian boatmen and voyageurs on these waters as their special
shrine, for in the early days all the fur-trading with the great
Canadian northwest was by canoes and bateaux on the Ottawa and Lake
Nipissing, and thence by portage to Lake Huron. Here came many years
ago, on a bateau down the St. Lawrence, the minstrel bard, Tom Moore,
and inspired by the locality, he composed in a cottage, still pointed
out, his noted "Canadian Boat Song":
"Faintly as tolls the evening chime,
Our voices keep tune, and our oars keep time.
Soon as the woods on shore look dim,
We'll sing at St. Anne's our parting hymn.
Row, brothers, row; the stream runs fast,
The rapids are near, and the daylight's past.
"Ottawa's tide! this trembling moon
Shall see us float o'er thy surges soon.
Saint of this green isle! hear our prayers:
O, grant us cool heavens, and favoring airs!
Blow, breezes, blow; the stream runs fast,
The rapids are near, and the daylight's past."
On the northern shore of the "Lake of the Two Mountains," with Oka
village nestling at the base, where an Indian colony live, are the two
mountains from which the lake is named. One, surmounted by a cross, is
Mount Calvary, having various religious shrines on its summit, and
seven chapels on the road up, representing the seven stations of the
cross. Here is also a monastery of the French "farmer Monks," the
Trappists, who cultivate a large surface. They live a secluded life
under ascetic rules, are not allowed to talk to each other, and only
men enter the monastery, all women being stopped at the threshold.
They rise at two o'clock in the morning, take breakfast soon
afterwards in absolute silence, this being the only meal of the day,
and retire to rest immediately after prayers at sunset. They devote
twelve hours daily to devotions, and labor in the fields the remainder
of the waking time. Their food is a scant allowance of water and
vegetables. They sleep on a board with a straw pillow, and never
undress, even in sickness. They are a branch of the Cistercians, and
their abode overlooks the placid lake, with Montreal spreading beyond.
But the city's finest suburban possession is its Mountain, the summit
being a pleasant park, and the slopes covered with luxuriant foliage,
which in the autumn becomes a blazing mass of resplendent beauty when
the frosts turn the leaves. From the top the view is of unrivalled
magnificence.
THE GRAND RIVER.
The Ottawa River is the most important tributary of the St. Lawrence,
over seven hundred miles long, and draining a basin of one hundred
thousand square miles, the most productive pine-timber region
existing. It was the "Grand River" of the early French-Canadian
voyageurs, and the name of Ottawa, changed considerably from the
original form, comes from the Indian tribe and means "the traders." It
has a circuitous course; rising in Western Quebec province, it flows
northwest and then west for three hundred miles to Lake Temiscamingue,
on the border of Ontario province; then it turns and flows back
southeastward, making the boundary between the provinces for four
hundred miles, until it falls into the St. Lawrence, the vast volume
of its dark waters pressing the latter's blue current against the
farther shore. It is a romantic river, filled with rapids and
cascades, at times broadening into lakes, and again contracted into a
torrent barely fifty yards wide, where the waters are precipitated
over the rocks in wild splendor. For twenty-five miles above its mouth
it broadens into the "Lake of the Two Mountains," from one to six
miles wide. Above the city of Ottawa there are rapids terminating in
the famous Chaudière Falls, where the waters plunge down forty feet,
and part are said to disappear through an underground passage of
unknown outlet. It has an enormous lumber trade, and by a canal
system, avoiding the rapids, has been made navigable for two hundred
and fifty miles. The Rideau River enters from the south at Ottawa,
making the route by which the Rideau Canal goes over to Lake Ontario
at Kingston. The Gatineau River also flows in at Ottawa, being of
great volume, over four hundred miles long, and a prolific timber
producer. In the villages around Montreal all the saints in the
calendar are named, so that, starting on an exploration of Ottawa
River, the route goes by St. Martin, St. Jean, St. Rose, St. Therese,
St. Jerome, St. Lin, St. Eustache, St. Augustine, St. Scholastique,
St. Hermes, St. Phillippe, and many more. But when the great religious
city is left behind the saints cease to appear, and everything in the
Ottawa valley above is generally otherwise named. This valley is
usually a broad and level intervale, with only an occasional rocky
buttress pressing upon the river. At one of these passes, in 1660, a
handful of valiant men held the stockade at Carillon, the foot of Long
Sault rapids, sacrificing their lives to save the early colony from
the Indians, the place being known as the "French Canadian
Thermopylæ." The full force of the Iroquois warriors were in arms up
the Ottawa, over a thousand of them, threatening to drive the French
out of Montreal. Dollard des Ormeaux and sixteen companions took the
sacrament in the little Montreal church, made their wills, and bound
themselves by an oath neither to give nor take quarter. A few
Algonquins joined them, and going up the river they hastily built a
stockaded fort at this pass. Soon the Iroquois canoes came dancing
down the rapids, and discovering the fort, they surrounded and
attacked it, but were repulsed day after day, until every one of the
brave garrison had been killed, when the Iroquois had lost so many of
their own warriors that they tired of the fighting, and avoiding
Montreal, returned southward to their own country. Some fugitive
Indians told the heroic story, which George Murray has woven into his
ballad:
"Eight days of varied horror passed; what boots it now to tell
How the pale tenants of the fort heroically fell?
Hunger and thirst and sleeplessness, Death's ghastly aids, at
length,
Marred and defaced their comely forms, and quelled their giant
strength.
The end draws nigh--they yearn to die--one glorious rally more,
For the dear sake of Ville Marie and all will soon be o'er;
Sure of the martyr's golden Crown, they shrink not from the Cross,
Life yielded for the land they loved, they scorn to reckon loss."
Some distance above, at the Chateau Montebello, lived in the early
nineteenth century Louis Joseph Papineau, the "French-Canadian
O'Connell," the seigneur of the district, who was the local leader in
resistance to English aggressions, of whom the French are very proud,
and his portrait hangs in the Parliament House at Ottawa. He was
defeated, banished and then pardoned, and lived here to a ripe old age
to see many of the reforms and privileges for which he had contended
fully realized under subsequent administrations. The Riviere aux
Lièvres rushes into the Ottawa down a turbulent cascade, through which
logs dash until caught in the booms at the sawmills below, where are
vast lumber piles. This river is two hundred and eighty miles long,
and just above its mouth has a fall at Buckingham of seventy feet,
giving an enormous water-power. The whole region hereabout is devoted
to lumbering. The French _habitan_ from Lower Quebec comes up into
this wilderness of woods with scarcely any capital but his axe, in the
use of which he is expert. These Canadians do not like leaving their
homes, but are compelled by sheer necessity. When the old Quebec farm
has been subdivided among the children, under the French system, until
the long, ribbon-like strips of land become so narrow between the
fences that there is no opportunity for further sub-division, the
young men must seek a livelihood elsewhere. The old man gives them a
blessing, with a good axe and two or three dollars, and they start for
the lumber camps. They catch abundant fish, can live on almost
nothing, and need only buy their flour and salt, with some pork for a
luxury. These lumbermen often wear picturesque costumes like the old
voyageurs, and they like flaming red scarfs. They are as polite as the
most courtly French gentleman, and pass their evenings in dancing,
with music and singing the ancient songs of their forefathers,
scorning anything modern. Many of them are Metis, or half-breeds, the
descendants of French and Indians. These are more heavy featured and
not so sprightly as the pure French, but they are equally skillful
woodmen, and have inherited many good traits from both races, though
they rather regard with pity their full-blooded Indian half-brothers,
whose lot is scarcely as favorable. All these people are devout
Catholics, and going up into the woods in the late autumn and
remaining until after Easter, the priests always visit their camps to
attend to their spiritual wants. An impressive scene in these vast
forests in the dawn of a cold winter morning is to see the priest
standing with outstretched arms at the rude altar, the light of the
candles revealing the earnest faces of his flock as they reverentially
attend the mass. These woodmen are firm believers in the
supernatural, convinced that the spirits of the dead come back in
various shapes. If a single crow is seen they are sure a calamity has
occurred; if two crows fly before them it means a wedding. An owl
hooting indicates impending danger. They are always hearing strange
voices at night, or seeing ominous shapes in the twilight wood
shadows. The Metis are good hunters, and great is their joy when a
belated bear is found near the camp, or a deer or moose is tracked in
the snow. Their lumbering is done near the streams, so the logs may be
thrown in and floated down by the spring freshets. They make a vast
product of timber, sold throughout the lakes and St. Lawrence region,
much going across the Atlantic.
THE DOMINION CAPITAL.
The earliest settler at the portage around the Chaudière Falls of the
Ottawa was Philemon Wright, of Woburn, Massachusetts, who came along
in 1800, and not getting on successfully, sold out about twenty years
later to cancel a debt of $200. Subsequently there was established at
the confluence of the three rivers, Ottawa, Rideau and Gatineau, by
Colonel By, a British military post and Indian trading-station, around
which in time a settlement grew which was called Bytown, distant about
a hundred miles from the St. Lawrence River. It was incorporated a
city in 1854 by the name of Ottawa; and when the Dominion
Confederation was formed in 1858 there was so much contention about
the claims of rival cities to be the capital--Montreal, Toronto,
Kingston and Quebec all being urged--that Queen Victoria, to finally
settle the matter, selected Ottawa. There is a population of about
sixty thousand, but excepting from the noble location of the
magnificent public buildings, the political importance of the city
does not attract the visitor so much as the business development. The
lumber trade makes the first and greatest impression; landing among
boards and sawdust, walking amid timber piles and over wooden
sidewalks, with slabs, blocks and planks everywhere in endless
profusion, the rushing waters filled with floating logs and sawdust,
busy saws running, planing-machines screeching, the canals carrying
lumber cargoes, the rivers lined with acres of board piles--an idea is
got of what the lumber trade of the Ottawa valley is. The timber is
almost all white and yellow pine. Alongside the Chaudière Falls at the
western verge of the town are clustered the great sawmills, while
capacious slides shoot the logs down, which are to be floated farther
along to the St. Lawrence. There are also large flour-mills and other
factories getting power from this cataract.
[Illustration: _Chaudière Falls, St. Lawrence_]
The Chaudière, or the "Cauldron," is a remarkable cataract, and the
Indians were so terrified by it, that to propitiate its evil genius we
are told they usually threw in a little tobacco before traversing
the portage around it. The rapids begin about six miles above,
terminating in this great boiling cauldron with a sheer descent of
forty feet, which is as curious as it is grand. Owing to the peculiar
formation of the enclosing rocks, all the waters of the broad river
are converged into a sort of basin about two hundred feet wide,
plunging in with vast commotion and showers of spray. Efforts have
been made to sound this strange cauldron, but the lead has not found
bottom at three hundred feet depth. The narrowness of the passage
between the enclosing rocky walls, just below the falls, has enabled a
bridge to be built across, connecting Ottawa with the suburb of Hull.
Here is given an admirable view of the foaming, descending waters,
clouds of spray, and at times gorgeous rainbows, flanked by timber
piles and sawmills, sending out rushing streams of water and sawdust
into the river below. Near by a chain of eight massive locks brings
the Rideau Canal down through a fissure in the high bank to the level
of the lower Ottawa, its sides being almost perpendicularly cut by the
action of water in past ages. The locks are a Government work, of
solid masonry, well built, and the fissure divides Ottawa into the
Upper and the Lower Town, pretty bridges being thrown across it on the
lines of the principal streets. The Rideau Canal follows the Rideau
River upwards southwest to the Lake Ontario level, and in the whole
distance of one hundred and twenty-six miles to Kingston, overcomes
four hundred and forty-six feet by forty-seven locks. Much of the
suburb of Hull and a considerable part of Ottawa, with enormous
amounts of lumber, were destroyed by a great fire in April, 1900, a
high wind fanning the flames that were spread by the inflammable
materials.
Upon Barrack Hill, at an elevation of one hundred and fifty feet,
surrounded by ornamental grounds, and having the Ottawa River flowing
at the western base, stand the Government buildings. They are
magnificent structures, costing nearly $4,000,000, the Prince of Wales
having laid the corner-stone on his visit in 1860. They are built of
cream-colored sandstone, with red sandstone and Ohio stone trimmings,
the architecture being Italian Gothic, and they stand upon three sides
of a grass-covered quadrangle, and occupy an area of four acres. They
include the Parliament House, the chief building, and all the Dominion
Government offices. The former is four hundred and seventy-two feet
long, the other buildings on the east and west sides of the quadrangle
being somewhat smaller. All are impressive, their great elevation
enabling their towers and spires to be seen for many miles. The
legislative chambers are richly furnished, and Queen Victoria's
portrait is on the walls of one House, and those of King George III.
and Queen Charlotte upon the other. The Parliamentary Library, a
handsome polygonal structure of sixteen angles, adjoins. The
Governor-General resides in Rideau Hall, across the Rideau River.
From a little pavilion out upon the western edge of Barrack Hill, high
above the Ottawa, there is a long view over the western and northern
country, whence that river comes. To the left is the rolling land of
Ontario province, and to the right the distant hills and looming blue
mountains of Quebec, the river dividing them. Behind the pavilion is
the stately Parliament House, its noble Victoria Tower, seen from
afar, rising two hundred and twenty feet.
MONTREAL TO QUEBEC.
The broad St. Lawrence River flows one hundred and eighty miles from
Montreal to Quebec. A succession of parishes is passed, each with its
lofty church and presbytère, reproducing the picturesque buildings of
old Normandy and Brittany, with narrow windows and steep roofs, all
covered with shining white tin which the dry air preserves. Little
villages cluster around the churches, with long stretches of arable
lands between. Among a mass of wooded islands on the northern bank,
the turbid waters of the lower Ottawa outlet flow in, the edge of the
clearer blue of the St. Lawrence being seen for some distance below.
The delta makes green alluvial islands and shoals. Thus we sail down
the great river, past shores that were long ago very well settled.
"Past little villages we go,
With quaint old gable ends that glow
Bright in the sunset's fire;
And, gliding through the shadows still,
Oft notice, with a lover's thrill,
The peeping of a spire."
In the eighteenth century, Kalm, a Swedish tourist in America, said it
could be really called a village, beginning at Montreal and ending at
Quebec, "for the farmhouses are never more than five arpents apart,
and sometimes but three asunder, a few places excepted;" and two
centuries ago a traveller on the river wrote that the houses "were
never more than a gunshot apart." All the people are French, retaining
the language and old customs, simple-minded and primitive, the same as
under the ancient French régime, and excepting that one village,
Varennes, has put two towers upon its stately church, all of them are
exactly alike. It is recorded that in Champlain's time some Huguenot
sailors came up the river piously singing psalm tunes. This did not
please the officials, and soon a boat with soldiers put off from one
of these villages, and the officer in charge told them that
"Monseigneur, the Viceroy, did not wish that they should sing psalms
on the great river." The first steamer that came along the St.
Lawrence created unlimited dread, horrifying the villagers. Solemnly
crossing himself, an old voyageur, who probably thought his trade on
the waters endangered, exclaimed, in his astonishment, "But can you
believe that the good God will permit all that?"
The Richelieu River, the outlet of Lake Champlain, comes in at Sorel,
the chief affluent on the southern bank, its canal system making a
navigable connection with the Hudson River. Cardinal Richelieu took
great interest in early Canadian colonization, and Fort Richelieu was
built at the mouth of this river, being afterwards enlarged to prevent
Iroquois forays, by Captain Sorel, whose name is preserved in the
town. Below, there is an archipelago of low alluvial islands, and the
St. Lawrence broadens out into Lake St. Peter, nine or ten miles wide,
and generally shallow, this being the head of the tidal influence. On
its southern side flows in the St. Francis River, the outlet of Lake
Memphremagog and of many streams and lakes in the vast wilderness
along the boundary north of Vermont and east of Lake Champlain. At its
mouth is the little village of St. François du Lac. As the shores
contract below Lake St. Peter, the town of Three Rivers is passed
midway between Montreal and Quebec. Here the fine river St. Maurice,
another great lumber-producing stream, flows in upon the northern
bank, two little islands dividing its mouth into a delta of three
channels, thus naming the town. The St. Maurice is full of rapids and
cataracts, the chief being Shawanagan Fall, about twenty miles inland,
noted for its grandeur and remarkable character. The river, suddenly
bending and divided into two streams by a pile of rocks, falls nearly
one hundred and fifty feet and dashes against an opposing wall, where
the reunited stream forces its way through a narrow passage scarcely a
hundred feet wide. The two lofty rocks bounding this abyss are called
La Grande Mere and Le Bon Homme. The headwaters of St. Maurice
interlock with some of those of the gloomy Saguenay north of Quebec.
An enormous output of lumber comes down to Three Rivers, and the
district also produces much bog iron ore. Here are extensive sawmills,
iron-works, and one of the largest paper-pulp establishments in
America, the unrivalled water-power being thus utilized. Below the St.
Maurice, as the outcropping foothills from the Laurentian Mountains
approach the river, the scenery becomes more picturesque. The
Richelieu rapids are here, requiring careful navigation among the
rocks, and Jacques Cartier River comes in from the north. In front of
St. Augustin village, years ago, the steamer "Montreal" was burnt with
a loss of two hundred lives, and on the outskirts is an ancient ruined
church, which is said to have fallen in decay because the devil
assisted at its building. This was in 1720, and the tradition is that
His Satanic Majesty appeared in the form of a powerful black stallion,
who hauled the blocks of stone, until his driver, halting at a
watering-trough, where there was also a small receptacle of holy water
for the faithful, unbridled the horse, who became suddenly restive and
vanished in a cloud of sulphurous smoke. Many pious pilgrimages are
made to the present fine church of the village, having a statue of
the guardian angel standing out in front, commemorating the Vatican
Council of 1870. As Quebec is approached, the "coves" are seen on the
northern shore, arranged with booms for the timber ships, for easier
transfer of lumber from the rafts floated down the river, and the
steep bluffs behind run off into Cape Diamond, projecting far across
the stream. Old Sillery Church stands up with its tall spire atop of
the bold bluff, with a monastery behind it. Here Noel Brulart de
Sillery, Knight of Malta, in 1637, established one of the early Jesuit
missions. Point Levis stretches from the southern bank to narrow the
river channel. The low gray walls of the citadel surmount the highest
point of the extremity of Cape Diamond, and rounding it, we are at
Quebec.
ORIGIN OF QUEBEC.
Whence comes the name of Quebec? "Quel bec! Quel bec!"--(What a
beak!)--shouted Jacques Cartier's astonished sailors, when, sailing up
the St. Lawrence, they first beheld the startling promontory of Cape
Diamond, thrust in towering majesty almost across the river. Thus,
says one tradition, by a natural elision, was named Quebec, when the
Europeans first saw the rock in 1535. Another derivation comes from
Candebec on the Seine, which it much resembles. The Indian word
"Kebic," meaning "the fearful rocky cliff," may have been its origin.
The Indian village of Stadacona was here when Cartier found it, a
cluster of wigwams fringing the shore in front of the bold cliff, its
people bearing allegiance to the Montaignais chief, Donnacona. Here
the ancient chronicle records that Cartier saw a "mighty promontory,
rugged and bare, thrust its scarped front into the raging current,"
and he planted the cross and lilies of France and took possession for
his king. Returning to Europe, he took back as prisoners the chief,
Donnacona, and several of his warriors, their arrival making a great
sensation. They were fêted and prayed for, and becoming converted,
were baptised with pomp in the presence of a vast assemblage in the
magnificent Cathedral of Rouen. But the round of pleasure and
feasting, with the excess of excitement, overcame these children of
the forest, and they all died within a year. Colonization on the St.
Lawrence, after Cartier's voyages, languished for seventy years,
various ill-starred expeditions failing, and it was not until 1608
that the city of Quebec was really founded by Samuel de Champlain, who
was sent out by a company of associated noblemen of France to
establish a fur trade with the Indians and open a new field for the
Church, the Roman Catholic religion being then in the full tide of
enthusiasm which in the seventeenth century made what was known as the
"counter reformation." Champlain built a fort and established the
province of New France, but his colony was of slow growth. There
subsequently came out the military and commercial adventurers and
religious enthusiasts, who were the first settlers of the new empire.
The Recollet Fathers came in 1615, and the Jesuit missionary priests
in 1625 and subsequently. The famous Canadian bishop, Laval de
Montmorency, Father Hennepin, and the Sieur de la Salle, all came out
in the same ship at a later period. Thus was founded the great French
Catholic power in North America.
The Church thoroughly ruled the infant colony of Quebec. In the fort,
black-garbed Jesuits and scarfed officers mingled at Champlain's
table. Parkman says, "There was little conversation, but in its place,
histories and the lives of saints were read aloud, as in a monastic
refectory; prayers, masses and confessions followed each other with an
edifying regularity, and the bell of the adjacent chapel, built by
Champlain, rang morning, noon, and night; godless soldiers caught the
infection, and whipped themselves in penance for their sins; debauched
artisans outdid each other in the fury of their contrition; Quebec was
become a mission." Champlain died at Christmas, 1635, after a long
illness, at the age of sixty-eight, the "Father of Canada," and Quebec
was without a Governor for a half-year. Finally, the next summer, the
Father Superior, Le Jeune, who had been directing affairs, espied a
ship, and going down to the landing, was met by the new Governor, de
Montmagny, a Knight of Malta, with a long train of officers and
gentlemen. We are told that "as they all climbed the rock together,
Montmagny saw a crucifix planted by the path. He instantly fell on his
knees before it; and nobles, soldiers, sailors and priests imitated
his example. The Jesuits sang Te Deum at the church, and the cannon
roared from the adjacent fort. Here the new Governor was scarcely
installed, when a Jesuit came in to ask if he would be godfather to an
Indian about to be baptized. 'Most gladly,' replied the pious
Montmagny. He repaired on the instant to the convert's hut, with a
company of gaily-apparelled gentlemen; and while the inmates stared in
amazement at the scarlet and embroidery, he bestowed on the dying
savage the name of Joseph, in honor of the spouse of the Virgin and
the patron of New France. Three days after, he was told that a dead
proselyte was to be buried, on which, leaving the lines of the new
fortification he was tracing, he took in hand a torch, De Lisle, his
lieutenant, took another, Repentigny and St. Jean, gentlemen of his
suite, with a band of soldiers, followed, two priests bore the corpse,
and thus all moved together in procession to the place of burial. The
Jesuits were comforted. Champlain himself had not displayed a zeal so
edifying." The spiritual power thus so zealously exerted thoroughly
controlled Quebec, and its masterful force always continued.
THE FRENCH-CANADIAN MISSIONARIES.
Boundless was the power exerted when the religious envoys of this
wonderful colony spread over the interior of America. When the heroic
bishop Laval de Montmorency stood on the altar-steps of his Basilica
at Quebec, he could wave his crozier over half a continent, from the
island of St. Pierre Miquelon to the source of the Mississippi, and
from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. The Jesuits' College at
Quebec was started in a small way as early as 1637, and from it, year
after year, issued forth the dauntless missionaries, carrying the
gospel out among the Indians for over three thousand miles into the
interior, preaching the faith beyond the Mississippi, and down its
valley, throughout Louisiana, many suffering death and martyrdom in
its most cruel forms. Nowhere in the church annals exists a grander
chapter than the record of these missionaries. Unarmed and alone, they
travelled the unexplored continent, bravely meeting every horrible
torture and lingering death inflicted by the vindictive savages, whom
they went out to bless. The world was amazed at their sufferings and
achievements. Even Puritan New England, we are told, received their
envoy with honors, the apostle Eliot entertaining him at Roxbury
parsonage, while Boston, Salem and Plymouth became his gracious hosts.
These devoted men loved the new country. "To the Jesuits," we are
told in their annals, "the atmosphere of Quebec was well-nigh
celestial. In the climate of New France one learns perfectly to seek
only one God; to have no desire but God; no purpose but for God. To
live in New France is in truth to live in the bosom of God. If anyone
of those who die in this country goes to perdition," writes Le Jeune,
"I think he will be doubly guilty." For years old France sent over a
multitude to reinforce these missions. They were urged on by rank,
wealth and power in the great work of converting the heathen, and the
noblest motives gave these missions life. Solitude, toil, privation,
hardship and death were the early French missionary's portion, yet
nothing made his zeal or courage flag. The saints and angels of their
faith hovered around these Jesuit martyrs with crowns of glory and
garlands of immortal bliss. It was no wonder that the French and
Jesuit influence soon extended far beyond the mere circle of converts.
It modified and softened the rude manners of many unconverted tribes.
Parkman, from whom I have already quoted, records that "in the wars of
the next century we do not often find those examples of diabolic
atrocity with which the earlier annals are crowded. The savage burned
his enemies alive, it is true, but he seldom ate them; neither did he
torment them with the same deliberation and persistency. He was a
savage still, but not so often a devil."
The French missionary priests survived the period of torture and
trial, and became, in fact, the revered rulers of many of the Indian
tribes. They thoroughly assimilated and learned the languages. The
priest, regarded with awe and affection, knew so much, and was so
skillful as counsellor and physician, that the untutored savage came
to look upon him almost as a supernatural being. The biographer of the
venerable Father Davion, who governed the Yazoos in Louisiana, tells
how the Indians regarded him as more than human. "Had they not, they
said, frequently seen him at night, with his dark solemn gown, not
walking, but gliding through the woods like something spiritual? How
could one so weak in frame, and using so little food, stand so many
fatigues? How was it that whenever one of them fell sick, however
distant it might be, Father Davion knew it instantly and was sure to
be there before sought for? Did any of his prophecies ever prove
false? What was it he was in the habit of muttering so long, when
counting the beads of that mysterious chain that hung round his neck?
Was he not then telling the Great Spirit every wrong they had done? So
they both loved and feared Father Davion. One day they found him dead
at the foot of the altar; he was leaning against it with his head cast
back, with his hands clasped, and still retaining his kneeling
position. There was an expression of rapture in his face, as if to his
sight the gates of Paradise had suddenly unfolded themselves to give
him admittance; it was evident that his soul had exhaled into a
prayer, the last on this earth, but terminating no doubt in a hymn of
rejoicing above." But great as may be the spectacle of triumphant
martyrdom, there are yet men unwilling to change places with the
missionary priest. Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in _The Problem_:
"I like a church; I like a cowl;
I love a prophet of the soul;
And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles:
Yet not for all his faith can see
Would I that cowléd churchman be."
But others also came to New France besides priests and martyrs; the
adventurers and beggared noblemen--poor, uneducated, yet bold and
courageous. The historian tells us of "the beggared noble of the early
time" who came over, "never forgetting his quality of _gentilhomme_;
scrupulously wearing its badge the sword, and copying, as well as he
could, the fashions of the court which glowed on his vision across the
sea with all the effulgence of Versailles and beamed with reflected
ray from the Chateau of Quebec. He was at home among his tenants, at
home among the Indians, and never more at home than when, a gun in his
hand and a crucifix on his breast, he took the warpath with a crew of
painted savages and Frenchmen almost as wild, and pounced like a lynx
from the forest on some lonely farm or outlying hamlet of New
England. How New England hated him, let her records tell. The reddest
blood-streaks on her old annals mark the track of the Canadian
_gentilhomme_."
QUAINT OLD QUEBEC.
Thus created a thoroughly French region, Lower Canada still maintains
the religious character of the original colony. The geographical names
are mostly those of the saints and fathers of the Church, and much of
the land is owned by religious bodies. The population is four-fifths
French, and nowhere does the Church to-day show more vitality or
command more thorough devotion. The city of Quebec almost stands still
in population, having about seventy thousand, of whom five-sixths are
French. It is now just as Champlain made it, though larger, a
fortress, trading-station and church combined, and quaintly attractive
in all three phases. No finer location could have been selected for a
town and seaport, and no more impregnable position found to guard the
St. Lawrence passage than its junction with the river St. Charles. An
elevated tongue of land stretches along the northwestern bank of the
St. Lawrence for several miles, and from behind it comes out the St.
Charles. Below their junction the broad Isle of Orleans blocks the
way, dividing the St. Lawrence into two channels, while above, the
noble river contracts to the "Narrows," less than a mile in width,
making a strait guarded all along by bold shores. At the northern
extremity of this tongue of land, and opposite the "Narrows" of the
river, rises the lofty cliff of Cape Diamond, three hundred and fifty
feet above the water, the citadel crowning the hill and overlooking
the town nestling at its foot. The fortifications spread all around
the cliff and its approaches, completely guarding the rivers and the
means of access by land; but it is now all peaceful, being only a
show-place for sight-seers. As may be imagined, this grand fortress is
magnificent to look at from the water approach, while the outlook from
the ramparts and terraces on top of the cliff is one of the finest
sights over town and rivers, hills and woods, in the world.
Quebec is quaint, ancient and picturesque, presenting strange
contrasts. A fortress and commercial mart have been built together on
the summit of a rock, like an eagle's nest. It is a French city in
America, ruled by the English, and was held mainly by Scotch and Irish
troops; a town with the institutions of the middle ages under modern
constitutional government, having torrid summers and polar winters,
and a range of the thermometer from thirty degrees below zero to one
hundred degrees above. When Charles Dilke came here he thought he was
back in the European Middle Ages. He found "gates and posterns, cranky
steps that lead up to lofty gabled houses with steep French roofs of
burnished tin like those of Liége; processions of the Host; altars
decked with flowers; statues of the Virgin; sabots and blouses; and
the scarlet of the British linesmen. All these are seen in narrow
streets and markets that are graced with many a Cotentin lace cap, and
all within forty miles of the Down East Yankee State of Maine. It is
not far from New England to Old France. There has been no dying out of
the race among the French Canadians. The American soil has left their
physical type, religion, language and laws absolutely untouched. They
herd together in their rambling villages; dance to the fiddle after
mass on Sundays as gaily as once did their Norman sires; and keep up
the _fleur de lys_ and the memory of Montcalm. More French than the
French are the Lower Canada _habitans_. The pulse-beat of the
Continent finds no echo here." Henry Ward Beecher thought Quebec the
most curious city he had ever seen, saying, "It is a peak thickly
populated, a gigantic rock, escarped, echeloned, and at the same time
smoothed off to hold firmly on its summit the houses and castles,
although, according to the ordinary laws of nature, they ought to fall
off, like a burden placed on a camel's back without a fastening. Yet
the houses and castles hold there as if they were nailed down. At the
foot of the rock some feet of land have been reclaimed from the river,
and that is for the streets of the Lower Town. Quebec is a dried shred
of the Middle Ages hung high up near the North Pole, far from the
beaten paths of the European tourists--a curiosity without parallel
on this side of the ocean. The locality ought to be scrupulously
preserved antique. Let modern progress be carried elsewhere. When
Quebec has taken the pains to go and perch herself away up near
Hudson's Bay, it would be cruel and unfitting to dare to harass her
with new ideas, and to speak of doing away with the narrow and
tortuous streets that charm all travellers in order to seek conformity
with the fantastic ideas of comfort in vogue in the nineteenth
century."
THE FORTRESS OF QUEBEC.
Up on the cliff, in 1620, Champlain built the ancient castle of St.
Louis, which stood on the verge of the rock, where now is the eastern
end of the Dufferin Terrace, at an elevation of about one hundred and
eighty feet above the river. This was of timber, afterwards replaced
by a stone structure used for fort and prison, and burnt in the early
part of the nineteenth century, the site being now an open square,
with some relics, on the verge of the cliff. The great Quebec Citadel
upon the summit of the promontory, three hundred and fifty feet above
the river, is one of the most formidable of the former systems of
stone fortifications. It covers forty acres, and has outlying walls,
batteries and defensive works enclosing the entire ancient city, the
circuit being nearly three miles. There are batteries guarding the
water approach, gates on the landward side (some now dismantled), and
four massive martello towers on the edge of the Plains of Abraham
above the city, with long subterranean passages leading to them and
other outlying works. The Quebec rock is a dark slate, with an almost
perpendicular stratification, and shining quartz crystals found in it
gave it the name of Cape Diamond. The portion of the works overlooking
the St. Lawrence is called the Grand Battery, while the surmounting
pinnacle of the Citadel, containing a huge Armstrong gun, is the
King's Bastion. While Quebec's magnificent scenery and its tremendous
rock-crowned fortress remain as they were during the great colonial
wars, yet the military glory is gone. England long ago withdrew the
regular garrison, and only a handful of Canadian militia now hold the
place, and the guns are harmless from age and rust, only two or three
smaller ones doing the present ceremonious duties. In fact the old
rock is so given to sliding, that salutes are forbidden, excepting on
rare occasions, lest the concussion may bring some of the fatal
rock-slides down upon the people of the Lower Town. There is a little
bronze gun preserved as a trophy in the centre of the Parade, which
the British captured at Bunker Hill. Grand as this Citadel is, it no
longer protects Quebec, for in fact the defense against an enemy is
provided by the newer modern forts across the river behind Point
Levis, which command the river approach and cost some $15,000,000 to
construct.
Yet great has been the conflict around this noted rock fortress in the
past. The earliest battles were at the old Castle of St. Louis, and
after the repulse of the New England colonial expeditions sent against
Quebec in 1711 it was determined to fortify the whole of Cape Diamond,
and then the Citadel and chief works were built. Two monuments,
however, record the greatest events in its history. The Wolfe-Montcalm
monument is the chief, erected just behind the Dufferin Terrace, in a
little green enclosure known as the "Governor's Garden," recording the
result of the greatest battle fought in Colonial America, the fateful
contest in 1759, on the Plains of Abraham, where both commanders fell,
which changed the sovereignty of Canada from France to England, and
the crowning victory of the "Seven Years' War," which Parkman says
"began the history of the United States." This is a plain shaft,
almost without ornamentation, and bears the names of both Generals.
The other monument is the little stone set up in the face of the cliff
on the river-front below the citadel, marking where the American
General Montgomery fell, in the winter of 1775. He had crossed the St.
Lawrence on the ice, and in imitation of Wolfe's previous exploit,
rashly tried to scale the almost perpendicular cliff with a handful of
troops, but was defeated and slain. Wolfe's successful ascent of the
bluff in 1759 had been made from the river three miles above Quebec,
at what is now known as Wolfe's Cove, where the timber ships load. A
little stream makes a ravine in the bank, and Wolfe and his intrepid
followers, having floated down from above with the tide, landed and
climbed through this gorge, the route they took being at present a
steep road ascending the face of the bluff among the trees, a small
flag-staff being planted at the top. The Plains of Abraham--so called
from Abraham Martin, a pilot living there--are now occupied by the
modern residences of the city and the massive buildings of the Quebec
Provincial Parliament. There is also a prison, and near it a monument
marking where Wolfe fell, being the second column erected, the first
having been carried away piecemeal by relic-hunters. Upon it is the
inscription: "Here died Wolfe victorious, Sept. 13, 1759." This marks
the most famous event in the history of the great fortress. Wolfe had
evidently a premonition. A young midshipman who was in the boat with
him, as they floated on the river at midnight to the ravine, told
afterwards how Wolfe, in a low voice, repeated Gray's _Elegy in a
Country Churchyard_ to the officers about him, including the line his
own fate was soon to illustrate, "The paths of glory lead but to the
grave," saying, as the recital ended, "Gentlemen, I would rather have
written those lines than take Quebec." William Pitt, describing the
great result of the battle, said, "The horror of the night, the
precipice scaled by Wolfe, the empire he, with a handful of men,
added to England, and the glorious catastrophe of contentedly
terminating life where his fame began--ancient story may be ransacked
and ostentatious philosophy thrown into the account, before an episode
can be found to rank with Wolfe's."
QUEBEC RELIGIOUS HOUSES.
Various streets and stairways mount the great Quebec rock in zigzags,
and there is also an inclined-plane passenger elevator. In the Lower
Town, the narrow streets display quaint old French houses with
queer-looking porches and oddly-built steps, high steep roofs, tall
dormer windows and capacious stone chimneys. The French population
cluster in the Lower Town and along St. Charles River. Churches and
religious houses seem distributed everywhere. The great Catholic
establishments are prominent in the Upper Town, nearly all founded in
the seventeenth century. The Holy Father at Rome, recognizing the
exalted position Quebec occupies in the Church, has made its
Cathedral, like the patriarchal churches of Rome, a Basilica, its
Archbishop being a Cardinal. It occupies the place of the first church
built by Champlain, is not very large, but is magnificently decorated
and contains fine paintings. Within are buried Champlain and
Frontenac, and the great Bishop Laval de Montmorency. Adjoining is the
palace of the Cardinal Archbishop, who is the Canadian Primate. Also
adjoining are the spacious buildings of the Seminary, founded and
richly endowed by Laval,--one of the wealthiest institutions and most
extensive landowners of Quebec Province. This is still regarded as the
controlling power of the Church in Lower Canada, as it has been for
two centuries. There is also a Cathedral of the Church of England, a
smaller and plain building, where the war-worn battle-flags of the
British troops, carried in the Crimea, hang in the chancel, and the
fine communion service was presented by King George III. Here is also
the memorial of the early Anglican bishop of Quebec, Jacob Mountain,
of whom it was said he happened to be in the presence of that king
when the king expressed doubt as to who should be appointed bishop of
the new See of Quebec, then just created. Said Dr. Mountain, "If your
Majesty had faith there would be no difficulty." "How so?" asked the
king; whereupon Mountain answered, "If you had faith you would say to
this Mountain, be thou removed into that See, and it would be done."
It was; Quebec getting a most excellent bishop, who labored over
thirty years there, dying in 1825. There are also the splendid
building of Laval University, one of the first educational
institutions of the Dominion; the Hotel Dieu, and Ursuline Convent
originally started by Madame de la Peltrie, in the Upper Town.
These establishments all had their origin in the religious enthusiasm
attending the settlement of Canada, in which France took great pride,
although Voltaire afterwards derided it as "Fifteen hundred leagues of
frozen country." From Sillery, where the first Jesuit Mission was
founded, went out the zealous missionaries and martyrs, who followed
the Hurons into the depths of the forest, and sought to reclaim the
Iroquois, as has been well said, "with toil too great to buy the
kingdoms of this world, but very small as a price for the Kingdom of
Heaven." From Sillery went the Jesuit Fathers, who explored all
America, and also Jogues, Brébeuf, Lalemont, and others, to martyrdom
in founding the primitive Canadian mission church. It was also the
religious French women as well as the devoted men, who laid so deep
and strong the pious foundation of Canada. Little do we really know of
the nun, who in her religious devotion practically buries herself
alive. Down in the Lower Town, near the Champlain Market, originally
lived the first colony of Ursuline nuns, who came out with Madame de
la Peltrie to teach and nurse the Indians. She afterwards left them,
as already stated, and went to help settle Montreal. Later their
establishment was removed to the Upper Town, where it now has an
impressive array of buildings, with about fifty nuns, who educate most
of the leading Quebec young ladies. The great success of this Order
was due to its Superioress, Marie Gruyart, known as Mother Marie de
l'Incarnation, a remarkable woman, who mastered the Huron and
Algonquin languages, and devoted herself and her nuns to the
special work of educating Indian girls, being called by Bossuet the
"St. Theresa of the New World." In the shrines of this convent are
relics of St. Clement Martyr, and other saints, brought from the Roman
Catacombs. Its most famous possession is the remains of Montcalm, who
was carried mortally wounded from the battlefield into the convent to
die. His skull is preserved in a casket covered with glass, and is
regarded with the greatest veneration. His body is buried in the
chapel, and his grave is said to have been dug by a shell which burst
there during the fierce bombardment preceding his death. This convent
has had a chequered history, being repeatedly bombarded, and twice
burnt during attacks on the city, and at times occupied as barracks by
the troops of both friend and foe. Of late, however, the lives of
these sisters of St. Ursula have been more tranquil.
[Illustration: _Montcalm's Headquarters, Quebec_]
The most extensive collection of religious buildings is the Convent
and Hospital of the Hotel Dieu, in the Upper Town. There are some
sixty cloistered nuns of this Order, founded in 1639 by Cardinal
Richelieu's niece, the Duchess d'Aguillon. They care for the sick and
infirm poor, their hospital accommodating over six hundred. The oldest
structure dates from 1654, and much of the collection is over two
centuries old. The most precious relics in their convent are the
remains of two of the Jesuit martyrs who went out from Sillery,
Fathers Brébeuf and Lalemont. There is a silver bust of the former,
and his skull is carefully preserved. Jean de Brébeuf was a Norman of
noble birth, who came out with Champlain, and he and Lalemont were
sent on a mission beyond Ontario to the Huron country, establishing
the mission town of St. Ignace, near Niagara River. They lived sixteen
years with these Indians, learning their language, and gaining great
influence over them. The Iroquois from New York attacked and captured
the town in 1649, taking the missionaries captive and putting them to
death with frightful tortures. Brébeuf, who frequently had celestial
visions, always announced his belief that he would die a martyr for
Christ. The story of his torture is one of the most horrible in the
colonial wars. He was bound to a stake and scorched from head to foot;
his lower lip was cut away, and a red-hot iron thrust down his throat.
They hung a necklace of glowing coals around his neck, which the
indomitable priest stood heroically; they poured boiling water over
his head and face in mockery of baptism; cut strips of flesh from his
limbs, eating them before his eyes, scalped him, cut open his breast
and drank his blood, then filled his eyes with live coals, and after
four hours of torture, finally killed him by tearing out his heart,
which the Indian chief at once devoured. The writer recording this
terrible ordeal says, "Thus died Jean de Brébeuf, the founder of the
Huron mission, its truest hero, and its greatest martyr. He came of a
noble race,--the same, it is said, from which sprang the English Earls
of Arundel, but never had the mailed barons of his line confronted a
fate so appalling, with so prodigious a constancy. To the last he
refused to flinch, and his death was the astonishment of his
murderers." Gabriel Lalemont, his colleague, was a delicate young man,
and was tortured seventeen hours, bearing the torments nobly, and
though at times faltering, yet he would rally, and with uplifted hands
offer his sufferings to heaven as a sacrifice. His bones are preserved
in the Hotel Dieu. The burning of St. Ignace village dispersed the
Hurons, but years afterwards a remnant was gathered by the Jesuit
Fathers, and their descendants are at Lorette, up St. Charles River.
From the Ursuline Convent the Champlain Steps lead down the cliff to
the Champlain Market, having alongside it the ancient little church of
Notre Dame des Victoires. This is a plain stone church of moderate
size, built in 1688 as the church of Notre Dame, on the site of
Champlain's house. The interior, which has had modern renovation,
displays rich gilding, and the church's interesting history is told by
two angels hovering over the chancel, each bearing a banner, one
inscribed "1690" and the other "1711." The fiery Count de Frontenac,
who was Louis XIV.'s Governor of Quebec, had ravaged the New England
colonies, and in 1690, shortly after the church was built, Sir William
Phips, from Massachusetts, retaliated. The Iroquois, who were English
allies, menaced Montreal, and all the French troops were sent thither.
Suddenly, in October, Phips and his fleet appeared in the St. Lawrence
below Quebec. Urgent messages were sent the troops to return, and the
devout Ursuline nuns prayed for deliverance with such fervor in the
little church, that Phips was struck with a phase of indecision,
wasted his time, summoned the town to surrender, a message which the
bold Frontenac spurned, and then, without making an attack, Phips
wasted more time, until the French troops did return, so that when the
demonstration was made it was successfully repulsed, and after
repeated disasters Phips and his fleet sailed back to New England.
Great was the rejoicing in Quebec, a thanksgiving procession singing
Te Deums marched to the little church, and then the Bishop, with an
elaborate ceremonial, changed its name to Notre Dame de la Victoire.
Twenty-one years afterwards, in 1711, another British invading force
came up the river under Sir Hovenden Walker, and again the
intercession of Notre Dame was implored. The reassuring answer quickly
came by fog and storm, producing dire disaster to the fleet, eight
ships being wrecked and many hundreds drowned. Quebec again was saved;
there was the wildest rejoicing, and in honor of the double triumph
the church was re-named as Notre Dame des Victoires. An annual
religious festival is held on the fourth Sunday in October to
commemorate these miraculous deliverances. But the famous little
church was not always to escape unscathed. One of the Ursuline nuns
prophesied that it would ultimately be destroyed by the British, who
would finally conquer, and when Wolfe's batteries bombarded Quebec in
1759 it severely suffered. It was repaired, and exists to-day as one
of the most precious relics in the ancient city, in its oldest
quarter, adjoining the market-place, and revered with all the
unquestioning devotion of the _habitan_.
THE DUFFERIN TERRACE.
There is a fine outlook from the Dufferin Terrace, high up on the
cliff above the river, the favorite gathering-place of the townsfolk
on pleasant afternoons. The St. Lawrence flows placidly, with a narrow
strip of town far down below at its edge, and a few vessels moored to
the bank. At one's feet are the Champlain market and the famous little
church, and a mass of the peaked tin-covered roofs of the diminutive
French houses crowded in along the contracted street at the base of
the cliff. High above rises the towering citadel with its rounded
King's Bastion, the black guns thrusting their muzzles over the
parapet and the Union Jack floating from a flagstaff at the top.
Across the river is Point Levis, with piers and railroad terminals
spread along the bank, and various villages with their imposing
convents and churches crown the high bluff shore for a long distance
up and down. Farther back upon the wooded slopes of the hills are the
great modern built forts which command the river and are the military
protection of Quebec, their lines of earthworks just discernible among
the trees. The river sweeps grandly around the projecting point of
Cape Diamond and the surmounting citadel, passing away to the
northeast with broadening current, where it receives the St. Charles,
and beyond is divided by the low projecting point of the green Isle of
Orleans. The main channel flows to the right behind Point Levis, and
the other far away to the left with the Falls of Montmorency in the
distance, and the dark range of Laurentian Mountains for a background
with the noble summit of Mount Sainte Anne, and the huge promontory of
Cape Tourmente at the river's edge. Nearer, the Quebec Lower Town
spreads to a flat point at St. Charles River, ending in the broad
surface of Princess Louise Basin, containing the shipping. Beyond
this, a long road extends along the northern river bank, through
Beauport and down to Montmorency, bordered by little white French
cottages strung along it like beads upon a thread. Such is the
landscape of wondrous interest seen from the cliff of Quebec. Across
the St. Lawrence, elevated one hundred and fifty feet above the river,
between Quebec and Point Levis is about being constructed a great
railway bridge with the largest cantilever span in the world.
A ride along the attractive road through Beauport gives an insight
into the home life of the French Canadian _habitan_. The village
stretches several miles, a single street bordered on either hand by
rows of unique cottages, nearly all alike; one-story steep-roofed
houses of wood or plaster, almost all painted white, and one
reproducing the other. The first Frenchman who arrived built this sort
of a house, and all his neighbors and descendants have done likewise.
They, like him, do it, because their ancestors builded so. The house
may be larger, or may be of stone, but there is no change in form or
feature. The centre doorway has a room on either hand with windows,
and a steep roof rises above the single story. The house, regardless
of the front road, must face north or south. The long, narrow strips
of farms, some only a few yards wide, and of enormous length, run
mathematically north and south. It matters not that this highway,
parallel with the river, runs northeast. That cannot change the
inexorable rule, and hence all the houses are set at an angle with the
road, and all the dividing-fence lines are diagonals. The sun-loving
Gaul taboos shade-trees, and therefore the sun blazes down upon the
unsheltered house in summer, while the careful housewife, to keep out
the excessive light, closes all the windows with thick shades made of
old-fashioned wall-papers. The little triangular space between the
cottage and the road is usually a brilliant flower-garden. Crosses are
set up frequently for the encouragement of the faithful, and there
are imposing churches and ecclesiastical buildings at intervals. Along
this road ride the French in their queer-looking two-wheeled caléches,
appearing much like a deep-bowled spoon set on wheels, and in
elongated buckboard wagons of ancient build, surmounted by the most
homely and venerable gig-tops. These French cottages are more
picturesque than their vehicles.
The French Canadian _habitan_, the _cultivateur_, and peasant of
Quebec province, is about the same to-day as he was two or three
centuries ago. The Lower Canada village reproduces the French hamlet
of the time of Louis XIV., and the inhabitants show the same zealous
and absorbing religious devotion as when the French first peopled the
St. Lawrence shores. Within the cottage, hung above the _habitan's_
modest bed, is the black wooden cross that is to be the first thing
greeting the waking eyes in the morning, as it has been the last
object seen at night. Below it is the sprig of palm in a vase, with
the little bonitier of holy water, and alongside is placed the
calendar of religious events in the parish. The palm sprig is annually
renewed on Palm Sunday, the old sprig being then carefully burnt.
Great is its power in warding off lightning strokes and exorcising the
evil spirits. The central object around which every village clusters
is always the church, with its high walls, sloping roof, and tall and
shining tin-clad spire. The curé is the village autocrat; the legal
and medical adviser, the family counsellor, and usually the political
leader of his flock. He blesses all the houses when they are built,
and as soon as the walls are up a bunch of palm is attached to the
gable or the chimney, a gun being fired to mark the event. When the
_Angelus_ tolls all stop work, wherever they are, and say the short
prayer in devout attitude. Before beginning or completing any task the
reverent _habitans_ always piously cross themselves. They do this also
in passing churches, or the many crosses and statues set up along the
roads and in the villages. They are temperate, industrious and
thrifty, live simply, eat the plainest food, are abundantly content
with their lot, and usually raise large families. In fact, there is a
bounty given, by act of the Quebec Provincial Legislature, of one
hundred acres of land to parents having more than twelve living
children. It is not infrequent to find twenty-five or thirty or more
children in a single family. In personal appearance the _habitan_ is
generally of small or medium size, with sparkling brown eyes, dark
complexion, a placid face and well-knit frame. He has strong endurance
and capacity for work, but usually not much education, the prayer-book
furnishing most of the family reading. The Church encourages early
marriages, and domestic fecundity is honored as a special gift from
Heaven. The pious veneration, like the creed of this simple-minded
people, is the same to-day as it was in the seventeenth century.
Their faith is fervent and their belief complete. They typify the
beautiful idea the late Cardinal Newman exemplified in his exquisite
poem:
"Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead thou me on;
The night is dark, and I am far from home;
Lead thou me on;
Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.
"I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou
Shouldst lead me on;
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and spite of fears
Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years!
"So long thy power hast blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since and lost awhile!"
LA BONNE SAINTE ANNE.
This road leads to the Montmorency River, a vigorous stream flowing
out of Snow Lake, ninety miles northward, down to the St. Lawrence.
For a mile or so above the latter river it has worn a series of steps
in the limestone rocks, making attractive rapids, and the waters
finally pitch over a nearly perpendicular precipice, almost at the
verge of the St. Lawrence, falling two hundred and fifty feet in a
magnificent cataract, the dark amber torrent brilliantly foaming, and
making vast amounts of spray. In winter there is formed a cone of ice
in front of these falls, sometimes two hundred feet high. The cataract
goes down into a deep gorge, worn back through the rocks, some
distance from the St. Lawrence bank, and protruding cliffs in the face
of the fall make portions of the water, when part way down, dart out
in huge masses of foam and spray. A large sawmill below gets its power
from this cataract, and it also provides the electric lighting service
for Quebec. Farther down the north shore of the St. Lawrence, through
more quaint villages--L'Ange Gardien and Chateau Richer--the road
leads along breezy hills and pleasant vales in the Coté de Beaupré, to
the most renowned shrine of all Canada, about twenty miles below
Quebec, the Church of "La Bonne Sainte Anne de Beaupré." This famous
old church is the special shrine of the _habitan_, the objective point
of many pilgrim parties from Canada and New England, where there now
is a large population of French Canadians, as many as a hundred and
fifty thousand pilgrims coming in a single year, and it is the most
venerated spot in all Lower Canada. The Coté de Beaupré, the northern
St. Lawrence shore below Montmorency, is an appanage of the Seminary
of Quebec. The little Sainte Anne's river comes down from the slopes
of Sainte Anne's Mountain among the Laurentides, and after dashing
over the steep and attractive cataract of Sainte Anne, flows out to
the St. Lawrence. Upon the level and picturesque intervale of this
stream is a primitive French village, whose people get support partly
by making bricks for Quebec, but mainly through the entertainment of
the army of pilgrims coming to the miraculous shrine of "La Bonne
Sainte Anne." The village spreads mostly along a narrow street filled
with inns and lodging-houses which are crowded during the pilgrimage
season from June till October, culminating on Sainte Anne's festival
day, July 26th. To the eastward of the village is the beautiful
church, not long ago built from the pious doles of the faithful, a
massive and elaborate granite building. Just above it, upon the bank,
is the original little church of Sainte Anne, which is so highly
venerated, and wherein the sacred relics of the saint are carefully
kept in a crystal globe, and are exhibited at morning mass, when their
contemplation by the pilgrims, combined with faith, works miraculous
cures. The old church of 1658, threatening to fall, was taken down in
1878, and rebuilt with the same materials on the original plan. It is
quaintly furnished in the French-Canadian style of the seventeenth
century, and one of its features is the mass of abandoned crutches and
canes piled along the cornices and in the sacristy, left by the
cripples who have departed relieved or healed.
This is probably the holiest ground in Canada, consecrated by nearly
three centuries of the most fervent devotion of the ever-faithful
_habitans_. Just below Sainte Anne is the companion village of St.
Joachim. Sainte Anne was the mother and St. Joachim the father of the
Virgin Mary. The tradition is that after Sainte Anne's body had
reposed quietly for many years at Jerusalem, it was sent to the Bishop
of Marseilles, and later to Apt, where it was placed in a subterranean
chapel to guard it from heathen profanation. The church at Apt was
swept away by the invader, but some seven centuries afterwards the
Emperor Charlemagne visited the town, and marvellous incidents took
place, light being seen emanating from the vault accompanied by a
delicious fragrance, whereupon investigation was made and the long
lost remains of Sainte Anne recovered. Ever since, her sacred relics
have been highly venerated in France, and it was natural that the
early French Canadians should bring their pious devotion into the new
Province. Various churches were built in her honor, the chief being
this one at Beaupré, by the devout Governor d'Allebout. With his own
hands the Governor began the pious work of erecting the church, and as
an encouragement, the Cathedral Chapter in France sent to the new
shrine a relic of Sainte Anne--a portion of a finger-bone--together
with a reliquary of silver, a lamp, and some paintings, all being
preserved in this church. The legend of the building is, that upon its
site a beautiful little child of the village was thrice favored with
Heavenly visions. Upon the third appearance, the Virgin commanded the
child that she should tell her people to build a church there in honor
of her saintly mother. Thus was the location chosen, and while the
foundation was being laid, a _habitan_ of the Coté de Beaupré, one
Guimont, sorely afflicted with rheumatism, came there with great
difficulty, and filled with pain, to try and lay three stones in the
wall, presumably in honor of the Virgin, her father and mother. With
much labor and suffering he performed the task, but instantly it was
completed he became miraculously cured. This began a long series of
miracles, their fame spreading, so that devotion to Sainte Anne became
a distinguishing feature of French-Canadian Catholicity.
The great Bishop Laval de Montmorency made Sainte Anne's day a feast
of obligation. During the French régime, vessels ascending the St.
Lawrence always saluted when passing the shrine, in grateful
thanksgiving that their prayers to Sainte Anne had been answered by
deliverance from the perils of the sea. Pilgrims flocked thither, and
many cures were wrought by pious veneration of the relics. As religion
spread among the Indians, sometimes the adjacent shore would be
covered by the wigwams of the converts who had come in their canoes
from remote regions, and the more fervent of them would crawl on their
knees from the river bank to the altar. To-day the pilgrims bring
their offerings and make their vows, pleading for relief, many
crossing the ocean from France, and it is said of these votaries at
the shrine that they now come, "not in paint and feathers, but in
cloth and millinery, and not in canoes, but in steamboats." It is
noteworthy that in all the vicissitudes of war repeatedly waged around
the famous place, the village being sacked and burned, the church was
always preserved. When the British under Wolfe, prior to capturing
Quebec in 1759, attacked Beaupré, they three times, tradition says,
set fire to the church, but by the special intervention of Sainte Anne
it escaped unscathed. Upon Sainte Anne's festival day, in 1891, many
thousand pilgrims poured into the village, and Cardinal Archbishop
Taschereau came down from Quebec, bringing another precious relic of
Sainte Anne--a complete finger-joint--which he had obtained for the
shrine from Carcassonne, in Languedoc, France. The Holy Father had
raised the new church to the dignity of a Basilica, and two years
previously he also sent from Rome a massive golden crown, set with
precious stones, and valued at $56,000. This crown was worn by the
rich statue of Sainte Anne, holding the infant Virgin in her arms,
which stands before the chancel. There was an elaborate ceremonial, a
large number of priests participating, and a solemn procession
translated the precious relic to the church, where, after the
services, it was venerated, the reliquary containing it being
presented to the lips of each communicant kneeling in the sanctuary.
Several miraculous cures were announced, but it is recorded that most
of the cripples taken into the church had to be carried out again
unrelieved. Around this sacred shrine crystallizes in the highest
degree the pious veneration of the faithful French-Canadian
_habitans_.
THE LOWER ST. LAWRENCE.
The river St. Lawrence below Quebec is a mighty arm of the sea,
stretching in from the Atlantic, through a vast valley enclosed by the
primeval forest. The northern shore shows the domination of
ruggedness, for here begins the mountain wall of the Laurentides,
stretching far away northeastward down the river towards Labrador. The
southern shore is less forbidding, having wide fertile slopes rising
to a background of wooded hills. Along the river bank is a sparsely
scattered strip of humanity, which is likened to a rosary, having the
primitive farmhouses for beads, and at every few miles a tall,
cross-crowned church spire. Set in between the river banks, just below
Quebec, is the broad and fertile Isle of Orleans, but beyond this the
St. Lawrence is six miles wide, and steadily broadens, attaining
twenty-four miles width at Tadousac, the mouth of the Saguenay, and
thirty-five width at Metis, one hundred and fifty miles below Quebec.
The Isle of Orleans is twenty miles long and very fertile, largely
supplying the markets of Quebec. To the northward Mount Sainte Anne,
the guardian of the famous shrine, rises twenty-seven hundred feet.
Jacques Cartier so liked the grapes grown on the island that he called
it the Isle of Bacchus, but the king, Francis I., would not have it
so, and named it after his son, the Duke of Orleans. Here were
massacred the Hurons by the Iroquois, who captured from them the great
cross of Argentenay, carrying it off to their stronghold, on Onondaga
Lake, New York, in 1661. On the northern shore of the island is the
old stone church of St. Laurent and farther along that of St. Pierre,
the meadows hereabout providing good shooting. The faithful at St.
Laurent were said to have been long the envied possessors of a piece
of the arm-bone of the Apostle Paul, a most precious relic, which was
clandestinely seized and taken over to St. Pierre Church. This made a
great commotion, and some of the young men of St. Laurent made an
expedition at night, entered the church, recaptured the relic, and
brought it back with some other articles, restoring it to the original
shrine. A controversy between the villagers followed, growing so
fierce that an outbreak was threatened, and the Archbishop at Quebec
had to intervene to keep the peace. He ordered each church to restore
the other its relics, which was done with solemn ceremony, processions
marching along the road between the villages, and making the exchange
midway, a large black cross since marking the spot.
The great promontory of the Laurentides, Cape Tourmente, stretches to
the river, with the dark mass of ancient mountains spreading beyond in
magnificent array, the cliffs rising high above the water, firs
clinging to their sides and crowning their worn and rounded summits.
On top of Tourmente the Seminarians have erected a huge cross, seen
from afar, with a little chapel alongside. The old Canadian traveller,
Charlevoix, said Cape Tourmente was probably so-called "because he
that gave it this name suffered here by a gust of wind."
"At length they spy huge Tourmente, sullen-browed,
Bathe his bald forehead in a passing cloud;
The Titan of the lofty capes that gleam
In long succession down the mighty stream."
Here are Grosse Isle, the quarantine station for the river, and the
Isle aux Coudres--Hazel Tree Island,--behind which a break in the
Laurentides makes a pleasant nook, the Bay of St. Paul, having little
villages named after the saints all about. Below, the mountain range
rises into the great Mount Eboulements, twenty-five hundred feet high,
its sides scarred by landslides brought down by various earthquakes,
which were once so frequent that the Indians called the region
Cuscatlan, meaning "the land that swings like a hammock." The name of
this mountain means the "falling, shaking, crumbling mountain," but
it is nevertheless now noted as the haughtiest headland of the
Laurentides. This whole region has been a great sufferer from volcanic
disturbances, the chief being in 1663, when the historian says "the
St. Lawrence ran white as milk as far down as Tadousac; ranges of
hills were thrown down into the river or were swallowed up in the
plains; earthquakes shattered the houses and shook the trees until the
Indians said that the forests were drunk; vast fissures opened in the
ground and the courses of streams were changed. Meteors, fiery-winged
serpents and ghostly spectres were seen in the air; roarings and
mysterious voices sounded on every side, and the confessionals of all
the churches were crowded with penitents awaiting the end of the
world." Below this frowning mountain, the little Murray River flows
in, making a deep bay and sandy beaches, and far back, under the
shadows of the bordering hills, are the parish church and the French
village of St. Agnes up the river. This place is Murray Bay, a
favorite watering-place, known as Malbaie among the French, the hotels
and wide one-story cottages of this Canadian Newport being scattered
in the ravine and on the hill-slopes. When Champlain first entered
this bay in 1608 he named it Malle Baie, explaining that this was
because of "the tide that runs there marvellously." It is said that an
attempt was once made to settle Murray Bay with Scotch emigrants, but
the families who were sent out soon succumbed to the overwhelming
influence of the surroundings, and their descendants, while having
unmistakable Scottish names, have adopted the French language and
customs. Over on the southern bank, thirty miles away, for the river
is now very wide, is another favorite resort, Riviere du Loup, with
the adjacent village of Kamouraska, the great church of St. Louis and
a large convent being prominent in the latter.
Riviere du Loup is the best developed of the watering-places of the
Lower St. Lawrence. The shore is gentle, and in sharp contrast with
the rugged northern bank. The village spreads on a broad plateau,
formed by the inflowing stream, there being hotels and boarding-houses
scattered about, a tall-spired church back of the town, and a long
wharf stretching out in front. To the eastward the sloping shore
extends far away to Cacouna, eight miles below, another favorite
resort also sentinelled by its church. The Riviere du Loup (Wolf
River) naming this place flows out of the distant southern mountains
to the St. Lawrence, and is said to have been so called from the
droves of seals,--called by the French "loups-marines"--formerly
frequenting the shoals off its mouth. Just back of the village the
stream plunges down a waterfall eighty feet high. Cacouna is the most
fashionable resort of the southern shore, and a place of comparatively
recent growth, its semicircular bay with a good beach and the cool
summer airs being the attractions. In front and connected by a low
isthmus is a large peninsula of rounded granite rock, shaped much like
a turtle-back and rising four hundred feet. From this came the Indian
name, Cacouna, or the turtle.
THE GRAND AND GLOOMY SAGUENAY.
Far over to the northward, across the broad river, is ancient
Tadousac, enclosed by the guarding mountains at the entrance to the
Saguenay. The harbor and landing are within a small rounded bay,
having the Salmon Hatching House of the Dominion alongside the wharf,
a cascade pouring down the hillside behind, and a little white inn
prettily perched above on a shelf of rock. The village spreads over
irregular terraces, encircling three of these little rounded bays,
beyond which the narrow Saguenay chasm goes off westward through the
mountains into a savage wilderness. This place has been a trading-post
with the Indians for over three centuries, and the ancient buildings
of the Hudson Bay Company testify to the traffic in furs, once so
good, which has become almost obsolete. It was visited by Cartier in
1535, and afterwards was established as one of the earliest missions
of the Jesuits, who came here in 1599 and raised the cross among the
Nasquapees of the Saguenay--the "upright men," as they called
themselves,--and the Montaignais, both then powerful tribes, which
have since entirely disappeared from this region, having withdrawn to
its upper waters, around and beyond Lake St. John. The old chapel,
replacing the original Jesuit church--said to have been the first
erected in North America--stands down by the waterside, a diminutive,
peak-roofed, one-story building, kept as a memorial of the past, for
the people now worship in a fine new stone church farther up the
rounded hill-slope. These knoll-like rounded hills or mamelons named
the place, for they are numerous, and Tadousac, literally a "nipple,"
is the Indian word for them. The most valued possession of the church
is a figure of the child Jesus, originally sent to the mission by King
Louis XIV. This is the oldest settlement of the Lower St. Lawrence.
The stern and gloomy Saguenay, the largest tributary of the Lower St.
Lawrence, is one of the most remarkable rivers in the world. Its main
portion is a tremendous chasm cleft in a nearly straight line for
sixty miles in the Laurentian Mountains, through an almost unsettled
wilderness. These Laurentides make the northern shore of the St.
Lawrence for hundreds of miles below Quebec, rising into higher peaks
and ridges in the interior, and being the most ancient part of
America, the geologists telling us the waves of the Silurian Sea
washed against this range when only two small islands represented the
rest of the continent. Through this vast chasm the Saguenay brings
down the waters of Lake St. John and its many tributaries, some of
them rising in the remote north, almost up to Hudson Bay. This lower
portion of the river goes through an almost uninhabitable desert of
gloomy mountains, the tillable land being in the basin of the Upper
Saguenay and Lake St. John, the people of that valley living there in
almost complete isolation. Logs and huckleberries are the crops
produced on this savage river, the only things the sparse population
can depend upon for a living, and the fine blueberries bring them the
scant doles of ready money they ever see. The Saguenay's inky waters
have the smell of brine as they break in froth upon the shore, and
then the air-bubbles show the real color to be that of brandy. The
upper tributaries give this color as they flow out of forests of
spruce and hemlock and swamps filled with mosses and highly colored
roots and vegetable matter. Almost all the lakes and rivers of the
vast wilderness north of the St. Lawrence present a similar
appearance, their rapids and waterfalls, seen under the sunshine,
seeming like sheets of liquid amber.
The vast accumulations of waters gathered from the heart of the
Laurentides by the tributaries of Lake St. John flow down the rapids
below the lake in a stream rivalling those of Niagara. Thus the
Saguenay comes into being in the form of lusty twins--the Grand
Discharge and the Little Discharge--deep and narrow river channels
worn in the rocks. For some miles they run separately through rapids
and pools, finally joining at the foot of Alma Island, where begin
the Gervais Rapids, four miles long. The Grand Discharge is a
beautiful stream of rapids, the rippling and roaring currents flowing
through a maze of islands, while the Little Discharge is a condensed
stream, so powerful and unruly that it actually destroys the logs in
its boisterous cataracts, the government having made a "Slide," down
which the timber is run past the dangerous places. After passing
Gervais Rapids the Saguenay has a quiet reach of fifteen miles to the
Grand Ramous, the most furious cascade of all, and then a few more
miles of rapids and falls bring it to Chicoutimi, ending its wild
career where it meets the tide above Ha Ha Bay. The first bold
Frenchmen who ventured up through the stupendous and forbidding chasm
of the Lower Saguenay gave this bay its name, to show their delight at
having finally emerged from the gloomy region. At Ha Ha Bay the tide
often rises twenty-one feet, and below, the river forces its passage
with a broad channel through almost perpendicular cliffs out to the
St. Lawrence. Its great depth is noteworthy, showing what a fearful
chasm has been split open, there being in many places a mile to a mile
and a half depth, while the channel throughout averages eight hundred
feet depth. For most of the distance the river is a mile or more wide.
The original name given the river by the Montaignais was Chicoutimi,
or the "deep water," now given the village below the foot of the
rapids. The present name is a corruption of the Indian word
Saggishsékuss, meaning "a strait with precipitous banks." The sad
sublimity of the impressive chasm culminates at Eternity Bay, where on
either hand rise in stately grandeur to sixteen hundred feet elevation
above the water Cape Trinity, with its three summits, and Cape
Eternity. Ten miles above is Le Tableau, a cliff one thousand feet
high, its vast smooth front like an artist's canvas.
This sombre river, whose bed is much lower than that of the St.
Lawrence, is frozen for almost its whole course during half the year,
and snow lies on its bordering mountains until June. It makes a
saddening impression upon most visitors. Bayard Taylor compared the
Saguenay chasm to the Dead Sea and Jordan Valley, describing
everything as "hard, naked, stern, silent; dark gray cliffs of
granitic gneiss rise from the pitch-black water; firs of gloomy green
are rooted in their crevices and fringe their summits; loftier ranges
of a dull indigo hue show themselves in the background, and over all
bends a pale, cold, northern sky." Another traveller calls it "a cold,
savage, inhuman river, fit to take rank with Styx and Acheron;" and
"Nature's sarcophagus," compared to which, "the Dead Sea is blooming;"
and so solitary, dreary and monotonous that it "seems to want
painting, blowing up or draining--anything, in short, to alter its
morose, quiet, eternal awe."
EXPLORING THE SAGUENAY CHASM.
Ha Ha Bay, where the exploring Frenchmen found such relief for their
oppressed feelings, is a long strait thrust through the mountains
southwest from the Saguenay for several miles, broadening at the head
into an oval bay, practically a basin among the crags, with two or
three French villages around it, named after various saints. The
modest one-story huts of the _habitans_ fringe the lower slopes near
the water's edge along the valleys of several small streams, each
cluster having its church with the tall spire. The basin is two or
three miles across, enclosed by bold cliffs and rounded hills, the
wide beaches of sand and pebble showing the great rise and fall of the
tide. There is a sawmill or two, and lumber and huckleberries are the
products of the district. Chicoutimi village is above the chasm, at a
point where the intervale broadens, the savage mountains retiring,
leaving a space for gentle tree-clad slopes and cultivated fields.
Standing high on the western bank are the magnificent Cathedral, the
Seminary, a Sailors' Hospital, and the Convent of the Good Shepherd,
and not far away a tributary stream pours fifty feet down the
Chicoutimi Falls in a rushing cascade of foam. There are extensive
sawmills, and timber ships come in the summer for cargoes for Europe,
and the place has railway connections with Lake St. John and thence
southward to Quebec. There is a population of about three thousand.
The universal little one-story, peak-roofed, whitewashed French
cottages abound, some having a casing of squared pieces of birch-bark
to protect them from the weather, making them look much like stone
houses, and peeping inside it is found that the inhabitants usually
utilize their old newspapers for wall-paper.
From Chicoutimi down to Tadousac the region of the Saguenay chasm is
practically without habitation. There are two or three small villages,
chiefly abodes of timber-cutters, but it is otherwise uninhabited; nor
do the precipitous cliffs usually leave any place near the river for a
dwelling to be put. As the visitor goes along on the steamboat it is a
steady and monotonous panorama of dark, dreary, round-topped crags,
with stunted firs sparsely clinging to their sides and tops where
crevices will let them, while the faces of the cliffs are white, gray,
brown and black, as their granites change in color. A few frothy but
attenuated cascades pour down narrow fissures. The scene, while
sublime, is forbidding, and soon becomes so monotonous as to be
tiresome. This gaunt and savage landscape culminates in Eternity Bay.
Ponderous buttresses here guard the narrow gulf on the southern shore,
formed by the outflow of a little river. The western portal, Cape
Trinity, as the steamboat approaches from above, appears as a series
of huge steps, each five hundred feet high, and the faithful
missionaries have climbed up and placed a tall white statue of the
Virgin on one of the steps, about seven hundred feet above the river,
and a large cross on the next higher step, both being seen from afar.
Passing around into the bay, the gaunt eastern face of this enormous
promontory is found to be a perpendicular wall of the rawest granite,
standing sixteen hundred feet straight up from the water. At the top
it grandly rises on the bay side into three huge crown-like domes,
which, upon being seen by the original French explorers when they came
up the river, made them appropriately name it the Trinity. This is one
of the most awe-inspiring promontories human eyes ever beheld, as it
rises sheer out of water over half a mile deep. Across the narrow bay,
the eastern portal, Cape Eternity, similarly rises in solemn grandeur,
with solid unbroken sides and a wooded top fully as high. The entire
Saguenay River is of much the same character, repeating these crags
and promontories in myriad forms. While not always as high, yet the
enclosing mountains elsewhere are almost as impressive and fully as
dismal. The steamboat, aided by the swift tide, moves rapidly through
the deep canyon, one rounded peak and long ridge being much like the
others, with the same monotonous dreariness everywhere, and every rift
disclosing only more distant sombre mountains. The chasm throughout
its length has no beacons for navigation, the shores being so steep
and the waters so deep they are unnecessary. A sense of relief is
felt when the open waters at Tadousac and the St. Lawrence are
reached, for the journey makes everyone feel much like a writer in the
London _Times_, who said of it: "Unlike Niagara and all other of God's
great works in nature, one does not wish for silence or solitude here.
Companionship becomes doubly necessary in an awful solitude like
this."
THE ANGLING GROUNDS OF LOWER CANADA.
Quebec province, on the Lower St. Lawrence, for hundreds of miles
north and east of the river is filled with myriads of lakes and
streams that are the haunts of the hunter and angler, and the
Government gets considerable revenue from the fishery rentals. As far
away as five hundred miles from Quebec, up in Labrador, is the
Natashquin River, and eight hundred miles down the St. Lawrence is the
Little Esquimau, these being the most distant fishery grounds. Among
the noted fishing streams are the grand Cascapedia, the Metapedia, the
Upsalquitch, the Patapedia, the Quatawamkedgewick (usually called, for
short, the "Tom Kedgewick"), and the Restigouche, on the southern side
of the Lower St. Lawrence, their waters being described as flowing out
to "the undulating and voluptuous Bay of Chaleurs, full of long folds,
of languishing contours, which the wind caresses with fan-like breath,
and whose softened shores receive the flooding of the waves without a
murmur." Around the great Lake St. John there is also a maze of lakes
and fishery streams. The most noted Canadian fishery organization is
the "Restigouche Salmon Club," having its club-house on the
Restigouche River, at its junction with the Metapedia, and controlling
a large territory. The guides in this region are usually Micmac
Indians, who have been described on account of their energy as the
"Scotch-Irish Indians." This tribe originally inhabited the whole of
Lower Canada south of the St. Lawrence, being found there by Cartier,
and the French named them the Sourequois or "Salt-Water Indians,"
because they lived on the seacoast. They were staunch allies of the
French, who converted them to Christianity from being sun-worshippers.
They have a reservation near Campbellton, on the Restigouche, and a
populous village surrounding a Catholic church. There are now about
seven thousand of them, all told, throughout the provinces. Glooscap
was the mythical chief of the Micmacs, whose power and genius were
shown throughout all the region from New England to Gaspé. He was of
unknown origin, and invincible, and he conquered the "great Beaver,
feared by beasts and men," on the river Kennebecasis, near St. John.
Glooscap's favorite home and beaver-pond was the Basin of Minas, in
Nova Scotia, where afterwards dwelt Longfellow's Evangeline. Micmac
traditions describe him as the "envoy of the Great Spirit," who lived
above in a great wigwam, and was always attended by an aged dame and
a beautiful youth. He had the form and habits of humanity, and taught
his tribe how to hunt and fish, to build wigwams and canoes, and to
heal diseases. He controlled the elements and overthrew all enemies of
his people; but the tradition adds that on the approach of the
English, the great Glooscap, "finding that the ways of beasts and men
waxed evil," turned his huge hunting-dogs into stone, and his huntsmen
into restless and wailing loons, and then he vanished.
The route to the angling waters of the great Lake St. John is by
railway northward from Quebec. It goes up the valley of St. Charles
River, past Lorette, where beautiful cascades turn the mill-wheels.
Here are gathered the scanty halfbreed remnant of the Hurons, once the
most powerful and ferocious tribe in Canada, who drove out the
Iroquois and compelled their migration down to New York State. These
Indians are said to have been Wyandots, but when the French saw them,
with their hair rising in bristling ridges above their painted
foreheads, the astonished beholders exclaimed, "Quelles hures!" (what
boars!) and hence the name of Huron came to them. The railroad goes
for two hundred miles past lakes and streams, and through the dense
forests of these remote Laurentian mountains, until it finally comes
out on the lake shore at the ancient mission town of "Our Lady of
Roberval," now become, through the popularity of the district, a
modern watering-place. This great Lake St. John, so much admired by
the Canadian and American anglers, was called by the Indians the
Picouagomi, or "Flat Lake," and it is in a region shaped much like a
saucer, lying in a hollow, with hills rising up into mountains in the
background all around. The lake is thirty miles long and about
twenty-five miles across, having no less than nineteen large rivers,
besides smaller ones flowing into it from the surrounding mountains,
the vast accumulation of waters being carried off by the Saguenay. The
immense flow of some of these rivers may be realized when it is known
that the Mistassini, coming down from the northward, is three hundred
miles long, and the Peribonka four hundred miles long, while the
Ouiatchouan from the south, just before reaching the lake, dashes down
a grand cascade, two hundred and eighty feet high, making an elongated
sheet of perfectly white foam.
Until the middle of the nineteenth century, this wonderful lake and
its immense tributaries were scarcely known to white men, yet upon its
shores stood Notre Dame de Roberval and St. Louis Chambord, two of the
oldest Jesuit Indian missions in America. For more than two centuries,
until the angler and lumberman began going to this remote wilderness,
it was a buried paradise in the distant woods, without inhabitants,
excepting a few Montaignais and their priests, and a scattered post or
two of the Hudson Bay Company, whose occasional expeditions over to
Quebec for supplies were the only communication with the outer world.
The solid graystone church and convent stand in bold relief among the
neat little white French cottages at Roberval, there are an immense
sawmill and a modern hotel, while in front is the grand sweep of the
lake, like a vast inland sea, its opposite shore almost beyond vision,
excepting where a far-away mountain spur may loom just above the
horizon. Here lives the famous ouananiche of the salmon family, called
"land-locked," because it is believed he is unable to get out to other
waters. He is a gamey and magnificent fish, with dark-blue back and
silvery sides, mottled with olive spots, thus literally clothed in
purple and fine silver. He has enormous strength, making him the
champion finny warrior of the Canadian waters. The chief fishery
ground for him is in the swirling rapids of the Grand Discharge. The
native Montaignais, or "mountaineer" Indian of this region, is a most
expert angler, seducing the royal fish with an inartistic lump of fat
pork on the end of a line from his frail canoe among the rapids, and
hooking the game more effectively than the costliest rod and reel in
the hands of a "tenderfoot." These dusky, consumptive-looking,
copper-colored Indians spend the winters in the unexplored wilds of
the Mistassini, and wander through all the wilderness as far as Hudson
Bay. When the snows are gone, they bring in the pelts of the beaver,
otter, fox and bear, to trade at the Company posts, and living in
rude birch-bark huts on the bank of the lake, spend the summer in
fishing, and pick up a few dollars as boatmen and guides.
THE ST. LAWRENCE ESTUARY.
Below the mouth of the Saguenay, the St. Lawrence stretches four
hundred miles to the ocean, its broad estuary constantly growing
wider. On the southern shore, below Cacouna, there is another resort
at a little river's mouth, known as Trois Pistoles. It is related that
in the olden time a traveller was ferried across this little river,
the fisherman doing the service charging him three pistoles (ten franc
pieces), equalling about six dollars. The traveller was astonished at
the charge, and asked him the name of the river. "It has no name," was
the reply, "it will be baptized at a later day." "Then," said the
traveller, anxious to get the worth of his money, "I baptize it Three
Pistoles," a name that has continued ever since. This diminutive
village seems rather in luck, for unlike most of the others, it has
two churches, each with a tall spire. The Lower St. Lawrence shores
maintain communication across the wide estuary by canoe ferries,
established at various places. A stout canoe, twenty feet or more
long, and having a crew of seven men, usually makes the passage. The
boat is built with broad, flat keel, shod with iron, moving easily
over the ice which for half the year closes the river, not breaking up
until late in the spring, and sometimes obstructing the outlet
through the Strait of Belle Isle until July. Farther down the southern
shore, below Trois Pistoles, is Rimouski, a much larger place,
described as the metropolis of the Lower St. Lawrence, and the outlet
of the region of the Metapedia. This town has a Bishop and a
Cathedral. Beyond are Father Point and Metis, and the land then
extends past Cape Chatte into the wilderness of Gaspé. When Jacques
Cartier first entered the river in 1534, he landed at Gaspé, taking
possession of the whole country in the name of the King of France, and
erecting a tall cross adorned with the fleur-de-lys. Very
appropriately, Gaspé means the "Land's End." They found here the
Micmac Indians, who were then reputed to be quite intelligent, knowing
the points of the compass and position of the stars, and having rude
maps of their country and a knowledge of the cross. Their tradition,
as told to Cartier's sailors, was that in distant ages a pestilence
harassed them, when a venerable man landed on their shore and stayed
the progress of the disease by erecting a cross. This mysterious
benefactor is supposed to have been a Norseman, or early Spanish
adventurer. An old Castilian tale is that gold-hunting Spaniards,
after the discovery by Columbus, sailed along these coasts, and
finding no precious metals, said in disgust to the Indians, "Aca
náda," meaning, "there is nothing here." This phrase became fixed in
the Indian mind, and supposing Cartier's party to be the same people,
they endeavored to open conversation by repeating the same words, "Aca
náda! aca náda!" Thus, according to one theory, originated the name of
Canada, the Frenchmen supposing they were telling the name of the
country. Another authority is that the literal meaning of the Mohawk
(Iroquois) word Canada is, "Where they live," or "a village," and as
it was the word Cartier, on his voyages up the river, most frequently
heard from the Indians, as applied to the homes of the people, it
naturally named the country.
The surface of the southern country behind Cape Chatte, and of Gaspé
(Cape Gaspé being a promontory seven hundred feet high), rises into
the frowning mountains of Notre Dame, the most lofty in Lower Canada,
the chief peak elevated four thousand feet. In 1648 a French explorer
wrote of these stately ranges that "all those who come to New France
know well enough the mountains of Notre Dame, because the pilots and
sailors, being arrived at that point of the great river which is
opposite to these high mountains, baptize, ordinarily for sport, the
new passengers, if they do not turn aside by some present the
inundation of this baptism, which is made to flow plentifully on their
heads." The bold southern shore of the St. Lawrence finally ends
beyond Cape Gaspé, where its mouth is ninety-six miles wide in the
headland of Cape Rosier, described by dreading mariners as the
"Scylla of the St. Lawrence."
The northern shore of the great river, beyond the mouth of the
Saguenay, is almost uninhabited. There is an occasional fishing-post,
but it is almost an unknown region, though once there were Jesuit
missions and trading-places, the Indians having since gone away. The
iron-bound coast goes off, past Point de Monts, the Egg Islands and
Anticosti, to the Strait of Belle Isle. This strait is named after a
barren, treeless and desolate island at its entrance, about nine miles
long, which has been most ironically named the Belle Isle, but the
early mariners, nevertheless, called it the Isle of Demons. They did
this because they heard, when passing, "a great clamor of men's
voices, confused and inarticulate, such as you hear from a crowd at a
fair or market-place." This is explained by the almost constant
grinding of ice-floes in the neighborhood. The Mingan River, a
beautiful stream where speckled trout are caught, comes down out of
the northern mountains, opposite Anticosti Island, and is occasionally
visited by enthusiastic anglers. This is the boundary of Labrador,
which stretches almost indefinitely beyond, comprising the whole
northeastern Canadian peninsula, an almost unexplored region of nearly
three hundred square miles. It is described as a rocky plateau of
Archæan rocks, highest on the northeast side and to the south, more or
less wooded, and sloping down to lowlands towards Hudson Bay. It is a
vast solitude, the rocks split and blasted by frosts, and the shores
washed by the Atlantic waves, where reindeer, bears, wolves and a few
Esquimaux wander. Its great scenic attraction is the Grand Falls. To
the northward of the headwaters of Mingan River is a much larger
stream, the Grand River, draining a multitude of lakes on the higher
Labrador table-land, northeastward through Hamilton Inlet into the
Atlantic. In 1861 a venturesome Scot of the Hudson Bay Company,
prospecting through the region, first saw this magnificent cataract.
For thirty years the falls were unvisited, but in 1891 an expedition
was made to them, and they have been since again visited. The cataract
is described as a magnificent spectacle, the river with full flow
leaping from a rocky platform into a huge chasm, with a roar that can
be heard twenty miles and an immense column of rainbow-illumined
spray. The plunge is made after descending rapids for eight hundred
feet, and is over a precipice two hundred feet wide, the fall being
three hundred and sixteen feet. The water tumbles into a canyon five
hundred feet deep and extending between high walls of rock for about
twenty-five miles. The distant Labrador coasts on bay and ocean abound
in seals and fish, and the adjacent seas are vast producers of codfish
and herring. There are few visitors, however, excepting the hardy
"Fishermen," of whom Whittier sings:
"Hurrah! the seaward breezes
Sweep down the bay amain;
Heave up, my lads, the anchor!
Run up the sail again!
Leave to the lubber landsmen
The rail-car and the steed;
The stars of heaven shall guide us,
The breath of heaven shall speed!
"Now, brothers, for the icebergs
Of frozen Labrador,
Floating spectral in the moonshine,
Along the low, black shore!
Where like snow the gannet's feathers
On Brador's rocks are shed,
And the noisy murr are flying,
Like bleak scuds, overhead;
"Where in mist the rock is hiding,
And the sharp reef lurks below,
And the white squall smites in summer,
And the autumn tempests blow;
Where, through gray and rolling vapor,
From evening unto morn,
A thousand boats are hailing,
Horn answering unto horn.
"Hurrah! for the Red Island,
With the white cross on its crown!
Hurrah! for Meccatina,
And its mountains bare and brown!
Where the Caribou's tall antlers
O'er the dwarf wood freely toss,
And the footstep of the Micmac
Has no sound upon the moss.
"Hurrah! Hurrah!--the west wind
Comes freshening down the bay,
The rising sails are filling,--
Give way, my lads, give way!
Leave the coward landsman clinging
To the dull earth, like a weed,--
The stars of heaven shall guide us,
The breath of heaven shall speed!"
END OF VOLUME II.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "America, Volume IV (of 6)" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.