After That Comes The Second
Freshet, Occasioned By The Melting Of Far-Off Snow And Ice Up In
The Great Northern Lakes, Which Are Little Known.
These rafts are
of immense construction, such as those which we have seen on the
Rhone and Rhine, and often contain timber to the value of two,
three, and four thousand pounds.
At the rapids the large rafts
are, as it were, unyoked, and divided into small portions, which go
down separately. The excitement and motion of such transit must, I
should say, be very joyous. I was told that the Prince of Wales
desired to go down a rapid on a raft, but that the men in charge
would not undertake to say that there was no possible danger;
whereupon those who accompanied the prince requested his Royal
Highness to forbear. I fear that, in these careful days, crowned
heads and their heirs must often find themselves in the position of
Sancho at the banquet. The sailor prince, who came after his
brother, was allowed to go down a rapid, and got, as I was told,
rather a rough bump as he did so.
Ottawa is a great place for these timber rafts. Indeed, it may, I
think, be called the headquarters of timber for the world. Nearly
all the best pine-wood comes down the Ottawa and its tributaries.
The other rivers by which timber is brought down to the St.
Lawrence are chiefly the St. Maurice, the Madawaska, and the
Saguenay; but the Ottawa and its tributaries water 75,000 square
miles, whereas the other three rivers, with their tributaries,
water only 53,000. The timber from the Ottawa and St. Maurice
finds its way down the St. Lawrence to Quebec, where, however, it
loses the whole of its picturesque character. The Saguenay and the
Madawaska fall into the St. Lawrence below Quebec.
From Ottawa we went by rail to Prescott, which is surely one of the
most wretched little places to be found in any country.
Immediately opposite to it, on the other side of the St. Lawrence,
is the thriving town of Ogdensburg. But Ogdensburg is in the
United States. Had we been able to learn at Ottawa any facts as to
the hours of the river steamers and railways, we might have saved
time and have avoided Prescott; but this was out of the question.
Had I asked the exact hour at which I might reach Calcutta by the
quickest route, an accurate reply would not have been more out of
the question. I was much struck, at Prescott - and, indeed, all
through Canada, though more in the upper than in the lower
province - by the sturdy roughness, some would call it insolence, of
those of the lower classes of the people with whom I was brought
into contact. If the words "lower classes" give offense to any
reader, I beg to apologize - to apologize, and to assert that I am
one of the last of men to apply such a term in a sense of reproach
to those who earn their bread by the labor of their hands. But it
is hard to find terms which will be understood; and that term,
whether it give offense or no, will be understood. Of course such
a complaint as that I now make is very common as made against the
States. (Men in the States, with horned hands and fustian coats,
are very often most unnecessarily insolent in asserting their
independence. What I now mean to say is that precisely the same
fault is to be found in Canada. I know well what the men mean when
they offend in this manner. And when I think on the subject with
deliberation at my own desk, I can not only excuse, but almost
approve them. But when one personally encounters this corduroy
braggadocio; when the man to whose services one is entitled answers
one with determined insolence; when one is bidden to follow "that
young lady," meaning the chambermaid, or desired, with a toss of
the head, to wait for the "gentleman who is coming," meaning the
boots, the heart is sickened, and the English traveler pines for
the civility - for the servility, if my American friends choose to
call it so - of a well-ordered servant. But the whole scene is
easily construed, and turned into English. A man is asked by a
stranger some question about his employment, and he replies in a
tone which seems to imply anger, insolence, and a dishonest
intention to evade the service for which he is paid. Or, if there
be no question of service or payment, the man's manner will be the
same, and the stranger feels that he is slapped in the face and
insulted. The translation of it is this: The man questioned, who
is aware that as regards coat, hat, boots, and outward cleanliness
he is below him by whom he is questioned, unconsciously feels
himself called upon to assert his political equality. It is his
shibboleth that he is politically equal to the best, that he is
independent, and that his labor, though it earn him but a dollar a
day by porterage, places him as a citizen on an equal rank with the
most wealthy fellow-man that may employ or accost him. But, being
so inferior in that coat, hat, and boots matter, he is forced to
assert his equality by some effort. As he improves in externals,
he will diminish the roughness of his claim. As long as the man
makes his claim with any roughness, so long does he acknowledge
within himself some feeling of external inferiority. When that has
gone - when the American has polished himself up by education and
general well-being to a feeling of external equality with
gentlemen, he shows, I think, no more of that outward braggadocio
of independence than a Frenchman.
But the blow at the moment of the stroke is very galling. I
confess that I have occasionally all but broken down beneath it.
But when it is thought of afterward it admits of full excuse.
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