“I do not know why he regarded a connexion with the Mohawks as degrading, for they were members of the celebrated confederation of the Six Nations—the Iroquois Confederation. The other members were the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, the Senecas, and the Tuscaroras.”
[Illustration: _The Chaudière Falls,_ near Quebec.]
It is our wish to assemble pictures of Canada by as many different classes of observers, and during as many different seasons, as is possible. Here are some winter sketches, which are not unentertaining.
“Nothing could be more Siberian than the aspect of the Canadian frontier; a narrow road, choked with snow, led them through a wood, in which patches were occasionally cleared on either side to admit the construction of a few log-huts, round which a brood of ragged children, a starved pig, and a few half-broken rustic implements, formed an accompaniment more suited to an Irish landscape, than to the thriving scenes we had just quitted. The Canadian peasant is still the same unsophisticated animal whom we may suppose to have been imported by Jacques Carrier. The sharp unchangeable lineaments of the French countenance, set off with a blue or red night-cap, over which is drawn the hood of a grey capote, fashioned like a monk’s cowl, a red worsted girdle, hair tied in a greasy leather queue, brown moccasins of undressed hide, and a short pipe in his mouth, give undeniable testimony of the presence of Jean Baptiste. His horse seems to have been equally solicitous to shame neither his progenitors nor his owner, by any mixture with a foreign race, but exhibits the same relationship to the horses, as his rider to the subjects of Louis XIII. Now, too, the frequent cross by the road side, thick-studded with all the implements of crucifixional torture, begins to indicate a catholic country: distorted virgins and ghastly saints decorate each inn room, while the light spires of the parish church, covered with plates of tin, glitter across the snowy plain.
[Illustration: _Raft on the St. Lawrence, Cape Sante._]
“At La Prairie we crossed the ice to Montreal, whose isolated mountain forms a conspicuous object at the distance of some leagues. From thence to Quebec, the road follows the course of the St. Lawrence, whose banks present a succession of villages, many of them delightfully situated; but all form and feature were absorbed in the snowy deluge, which now deepened every league; add to which, the sleigh-track, by frequently running on the bed of the river, placed us below prospect of every kind. We found the inns neat, and the people attentive; French politesse began to be contrasted with American bluntness. It is curious to observe that this characteristic of the Americans, which so frequently offends the polished feelings of English travellers, is exactly what was formerly objected by the French to ourselves. The ‘rudesse’ of the English character was long a standing jest with our refined neighbours; but we have now, it seems, so far shaken off this odious remnant of uncourtly habits, as to regard it with true French horror in our trans-Atlantic cousins.