The View
From The Back Of The Library, Up To The Chaudiere Falls And To The
Saw-Mills By Which They Are Surrounded, Is Very Lovely.
So that I
will say again that I know no site for such a set of buildings so
happy as regards both beauty and grandeur.
It is intended that the
library, of which the walls were only ten feet above the ground
when I was there, shall be an octagonal building, in shape and
outward character like the chapter house of a cathedral. This
structure will, I presume, be surrounded by gravel walks and green
sward. Of the library there is a large model showing all the
details of the architecture; and if that model be ultimately
followed, this building alone will be worthy of a visit from
English tourists. To me it was very wonderful to find such an
edifice in the course of erection on the banks of a wild river
almost at the back of Canada. But if ever I visit Canada again, it
will be to see those buildings when completed.
And now, like all friendly critics, having bestowed my modicum of
praise, I must proceed to find fault. I cannot bring myself to
administer my sugar-plum without adding to it some bitter morsel by
way of antidote. The building to the left of the quadrangle as it
is entered is deficient in length, and on that account appears mean
to the eye. The two side buildings are brought up close to the
street, so that each has a frontage immediately on the street.
Such being the case, they should be of equal length, or nearly so.
Had the center of one fronted the center of the other, a difference
of length might have been allowed; but in this case the side front
of the smaller one would not have reached the street. As it is,
the space between the main building and the smaller wing is
disproportionably large, and the very distance at which it stands
will, I fear, give to it that appearance of meanness of which I
have spoken. The clerk of the works, who explained to me with much
courtesy the plan of the buildings, stated that the design of this
wing was capable of elongation, and had been expressly prepared
with that object. If this be so, I trust that the defect will be
remedied.
The great trade of Canada is lumbering; and lumbering consists in
cutting down pine-trees up in the far distant forests, in hewing or
sawing them into shape for market, and getting them down the rivers
to Quebec, from whence they are exported to Europe, and chiefly to
England. Timber in Canada is called lumber; those engaged in the
trade are called lumberers, and the business itself is called
lumbering. After a lapse of time it must no doubt become
monotonous to those engaged in it, and the name is not engaging;
but there is much about it that is very picturesque. A saw-mill
worked by water power is almost always a pretty object; and stacks
of new-cut timber are pleasant to the smell, and group themselves
not amiss on the water's edge. If I had the time, and were a year
or two younger, I should love well to go up lumbering into the
woods. The men for this purpose are hired in the fall of the year,
and are sent up hundreds of miles away to the pine forests in
strong gangs. Everything is there found for them. They make log
huts for their shelter, and food of the best and the strongest is
taken up for their diet. But no strong drink of any kind is
allowed, nor is any within reach of the men. There are no publics,
no shebeen houses, no grog-shops. Sobriety is an enforced virtue;
and so much is this considered by the masters, and understood by
the men, that very little contraband work is done in the way of
taking up spirits to these settlements. It may be said that the
work up in the forests is done with the assistance of no stronger
drink than tea; and it is very hard work. There cannot be much
work that is harder; and it is done amid the snows and forests of a
Canadian winter. A convict in Bermuda cannot get through his daily
eight hours of light labor without an allowance of rum; but a
Canadian lumberer can manage to do his daily task on tea without
milk. These men, however, are by no means teetotalers. When they
come back to the towns they break out, and reward themselves for
their long-enforced moderation. The wages I found to be very
various, running from thirteen or fourteen dollars a month to
twenty-eight or thirty, according to the nature of the work. The
men who cut down the trees receive more than those who hew them
when down, and these again more than the under class who make the
roads and clear the ground. These money wages, however, are in
addition to their diet. The operation requiring the most skill is
that of marking the trees for the axe. The largest only are worth
cutting, and form and soundness must also be considered.
But if I were about to visit a party of lumberers in the forest, I
should not be disposed to pass a whole winter with them. Even of a
very good thing one may have too much, I would go up in the spring,
when the rafts are being formed in the small tributary streams, and
I would come down upon one of them, shooting the rapids of the
rivers as soon as the first freshets had left the way open. A
freshet in the rivers is the rush of waters occasioned by melting
snow and ice. The first freshets take down the winter waters of
the nearer lakes and rivers. Then the streams become for a time
navigable, and the rafts go down.
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