Sketches in Canada, and rambles among the red men Part 3

"Every man," said he, "would like to have an Ophelia or a Desdemona for his wife." No doubt; the sentiment is truly a masculine one: and what was _their_ fate? What would now be the fate of such unresisting and confiding angels? Is this the age of Arcadia? Do we live among Paladins and Sir Charles Grandisons, and are our weakness, and our innocence, and our ignorance, safe-guards--or snares? Do we indeed find our account in being

"Fine by defect, and beautifully weak?"

No; women need in these times _character_ beyond everything else; the qualities which will enable us to endure and to resist evil; the self-governed, the cultivated, active mind, to protect and to maintain ourselves. How many wretched women marry for a maintenance! How many wretched women sell themselves to dishonour for bread!--and there is small difference, if any, in the infamy and the misery! How many unmarried women live in heart-wearing dependence;--if poor, in solitary penury, loveless, joyless, unendeared;--if rich, in aimless, pitiful trifling! How many, strange to say, marry for the independence they dare not otherwise claim! But the more paths opened to us, the less fear that we should go astray.

Surely, it is dangerous, it is wicked, in these days, to follow the old saw, to bring up women to be "happy wives and mothers;" that is to say, to let all their accomplishments, their sentiments, their views of life, take one direction, as if for women there existed only one destiny--one hope, one blessing, one object, one pa.s.sion in existence. Some people say it ought to be so, but we know that it is _not_ so; we know that hundreds, that thousands of women are not happy wives and mothers--are never either wives or mothers at all. The cultivation of the moral strength and the active energies of a woman's mind, together with the intellectual faculties and tastes, will not make a woman a less good, less happy wife and mother, and will enable her to find content and independence when denied love and happiness.

QUESTIONINGS.

March 15.

This last paragraph, which I wrote last evening, sent me to bed with my head full of all manner of thoughts, and memories, and fancies.

Whence and what are we, "that things whose sense we see not, frey us with things that be not?" If I had the heart of that wondrous bird in the Persian tales, which being pressed upon a human heart, obliged that heart to utter truth through the lips, sleeping or waking, then I think I would inquire how far in each bosom exists the belief in the supernatural? In many minds which I know, and otherwise strong minds, it certainly exists a hidden source of torment; in others, not stronger, it exists a source of absolute pleasure and excitement. I have known people most wittily ridicule, or gravely discountenance, a belief in spectral appearances, and all the time I could see in their faces that once in their lives at least they had been frightened at their own shadow. The conventional cowardice, the fear of ridicule, even the self-respect which prevents intelligent persons from revealing the exact truth of what pa.s.ses through their own minds on this point, deprives us of a means to trace to its sources and develop an interesting branch of Psychology. Between vulgar credulity and exaggeration on the one hand, and the absolute scepticism and materialism of some would-be philosophers on the other, lies a vast s.p.a.ce of debatable ground, a sort of twilight region or _limbo_, through which I do not see my way distinctly.

How far are our perceptions confined to our outward senses? Can any one tell?--for that our perceptions are not wholly confined to impressions taken in by the outward senses, seems the only one thing proved; and are such sensible impressions the only real ones? When any one asks me gaily the so common and common-place question--common even in these our rational times--"Do you now really believe in ghosts?" I generally answer as gaily--"I really don't know!" In the common, vulgar meaning of the words, I certainly do _not_; but in the reality of many things termed imaginary I certainly do.

The following beautiful and original interpretation of Goethe's ballad of the "Erl-King" is not in Ekermann's book (the "Gesprache mit Goethe,"

which I am now studying), but I give it to you in the words in which it was given to me.

"Goethe's 'Erl-Konig' is a moral allegory of deep meaning, though I am not sure he meant it as such, or intended all that it signifies. There are beings in the world who see, who feel, with a finer sense than that granted to other mortals. They see the spiritual, the imaginative sorrow, or danger, or terror which threatens them; and those who see not with the same eyes, talk reason and philosophy to them. The poor frightened child cries out for aid, for mercy; and Papa Wisdom--worldly wisdom--answers,--

"'Mein Sohn, es ist ein Nebelstrief!'

"Or,--

"'Es scheinen die alten Weiden so grau!'

"It is only the vapour-wreath, or the grey willows waving, and tells him to be quiet! At last the poor child of feeling is found dead in the arms of Wisdom, from causes which no one else perceived--or believed! Is it not often so?"

On the subject of religion I find this beautiful comparison, but am not sure whether it be Ekermann's or Goethe's. "A connoisseur standing before the picture of a great master will regard it as a whole. He knows how to combine instantly the scattered parts into the general effect; the universal, as well as the individual, is to him animated. He has no preference for certain portions: he does not ask why this or that face is beautiful or otherwise; why _this_ part is light, _that_ dark; only he requires that all shall be in the right place, and according to the just rules of art; but place an ignorant person before such a picture, and you will see that the great design of the whole will either be overlooked by him, or confuse him utterly. Some small portion will attract him, another will offend him, and in the end he will dwell upon some trifling object which is familiar to him, and praise this helmet, or that feather, as being well executed.

"We men, before the great picture of the destinies of the universe, play the part of such dunces, such novices in art. Here we are attracted by a bright spot, a graceful configuration; _there_ we are repelled by a deep shadow, a painful object; the immense WHOLE bewilders and perplexes us; we seek in vain to penetrate the leading idea of that great Being, who designed the whole upon a plan which our limited human intellect cannot comprehend."

SOUTHEY'S DOCTOR.

March 29.

To those who see only with their eyes, the distant is always indistinct and little, becoming less and less as it recedes, till utterly lost; but to the imagination, which thus reverses the perspective of the senses, the far off is great and imposing, the magnitude increasing with the distance.

I amused myself this morning with that most charming book "The Doctor;"--it is not the second nor the third time of reading. How delicious it is wherever it opens!--how brimful of erudition and wit, and how rich in thought, and sentiment, and humour! but containing a.s.sumptions, and opinions, and prognostications, in which I would not believe;--no, not for the world!

How true what Southey says! (the Doctor I mean--I beg his pardon)--"We make the greater part of the evil circ.u.mstances in which we are placed, and then we fit ourselves for those circ.u.mstances by a process of degradation, the effect of which most people see in the cla.s.ses below them, though they may not be conscious that it is operating in a different manner, but with equal force, upon themselves."

The effect of those pre-ordained evils--if they are such--which we inherit with our mortal state, inevitable death--the separation from those we love--old age with its wants, its feebleness, its helplessness--those sufferings which are in the course of nature, are quite sufficient in the infliction, or in the fear of them, to keep the spirit chastened, and the reflecting mind humble before G.o.d. But what I _do_ deprecate, is to hear people preaching resignation to social, self-created evils; fitting, or trying to fit, their own natures by "a process of degradation" to circ.u.mstances which they ought to resist, and which they do _inwardly_ resist, keeping up a constant, wearing, impotent strife between the life that is _within_ and the life that is _without_. How constantly do I read this in the countenances of those I meet in the world!--They do not know themselves why there should be this perpetual uneasiness, this jarring and discord within; but it is the vain struggle of the soul, which G.o.d created in his own image, to fit its strong, immortal nature for the society which men have framed after their own devices. A _vain_ struggle it is! succeeding only in appearance, never in reality,--so we walk about the world the masks of ourselves, pitying each other. When we meet truth we are as much astonished as I used to be at the carnival, when, in the midst of a crowd of fantastic, lifeless, painted faces, I met with some one who had plucked away his mask and stuck it in his hat, and looked out upon me with the real human smile.

The Aurora Borealis is of almost nightly occurrence, but this evening it has been more than usually resplendent; radiating up from the north, and spreading to the east and west in form like a fan, the lower point of a pale white, then yellow, amber, orange, successively, and the extremities of a glowing crimson, intense, yet most delicate, like the heart of an unblown rose. It shifted its form and hue at every moment, flashing and waving like a banner in the breeze; and through this portentous veil, transparent as light itself, the stars shone out with a calm and steady brightness; and I thought, as I looked upon them, of a character we both know, where, like those fair stars, the intellectual powers shine serenely bright through a veil of pa.s.sions, fancies, and caprices. It is most awfully beautiful! I have been standing at my window watching its evolutions, till it is no longer night, but morning.

LAKE ONTARIO.

April 15.

The ice in the Bay of Toronto has been, during the winter months, from four to five feet in thickness: within the last few days it has been cracking in every direction with strange noises, and last night, during a tremendous gale from the east, it was rent, and loosened, and driven at once out of the bay. "It moveth altogether, if it move at all." The last time I drove across the bay, the ice beneath me appeared as fixed and firm as the foundations of the earth, and within twelve hours it has disappeared, and to-day the first steam-boat of the season entered our harbour. They called me to the window to see it, as, with flags and streamers flying, and amid the cheers of the people, it swept majestically into the bay. I sympathised with the general rejoicing, for I can fully understand all the animation and bustle which the opening of the navigation will bring to our torpid capital.

May 19.

This beautiful Lake Ontario!--my lake--for I begin to be in love with it, and look on it as mine!--it changed its hues every moment, the shades of purple and green fleeting over it, now dark, now l.u.s.trous, now pale--like a dolphin dying; or, to use a more exact though less poetical comparison, dappled, and varying like the back of a mackerel, with every now and then a streak of silver light dividing the shades of green: magnificent, tumultuous clouds came rolling round the horizon; and the little graceful schooners, falling into every beautiful att.i.tude, and catching every variety of light and shade, came curtseying into the bay: and flights of wild geese, and great black loons, were skimming, diving, sporting over the bosom of the lake; and beautiful little unknown birds, in gorgeous plumage of crimson and black, were fluttering about the garden: all life, and light, and beauty were abroad--the resurrection of Nature! How beautiful it was! how dearly welcome to my senses--to my heart--this spring which comes at last--so long wished for, so long waited for!

ERINDALE.

--A very pretty place, with a very pretty name. A kind invitation led me hither, to seek change of air, change of scene, and every other change I most needed.

The Britannia steam-boat, which plies daily between Toronto and Hamilton, brought us to the mouth of the Credit River in an hour and a half. By the orders of Mr. M * * *, a spring cart or wagon, the usual vehicle of the country, was waiting by the inn, on the sh.o.r.e of the lake, to convey me through the Woods to his house; and the master of the inn, a decent, respectable man, drove the wagon. He had left England a mere child, thirty years ago, with his father, mother, and seven brothers and sisters, and eighteen years ago had come to Canada from the United States, at the suggestion of a relation, to "settle in the bush,"

the common term for uncleared land; at that time they had nothing, as he said, but "health and hands." The family, now reduced to five, are all doing well. He has himself a farm of two hundred and fifty acres, his own property; his brother has much more; his sisters are well settled.

"Any man," said he, "with health and a pair of hands, could get on well in this country, if it were not for _the drink; that_ ruins hundreds."

They are forming a harbour at the mouth of the river--widening and deepening the channel; but, owing to the want of means and money during the present perplexities, the works are not going on. There is a clean, tidy inn, and some log and frame houses; the situation is low, swampy, and I should suppose unhealthy; but they a.s.sured me, that though still subject to ague and fever in the spring, every year diminished this inconvenience, as the draining and clearing of the lands around was proceeding rapidly.

The River Credit is so called, because in _ancient_ times (_i. e._ forty or fifty years ago) the fur traders met the Indians on its banks, and delivered to them on _credit_ the goods for which, the following year, they received the value, or rather ten times the value, in skins. In a country where there is no law of debtor or creditor, no bonds, stamps, bills, or bailiffs, no possibility of punishing, or even catching a refractory or fraudulent debtor, but, on the contrary, every possibility of being tomahawked by said debtor, this might seem a hazardous arrangement; yet I have been a.s.sured by those long engaged in the trade, both in the upper and lower province, that for an Indian to break his engagements is a thing unheard of: and if, by any personal accident, he should be prevented from bringing in the stipulated number of beaver skins, his relatives and friends consider their honour implicated, and make up the quant.i.ty for him.

The fur trade has long ceased upon these sh.o.r.es, once the scene of b.l.o.o.d.y conflicts between the Hurons and the Missa.s.saguas. The latter were at length nearly extirpated; a wretched, degenerate remnant of the tribe still continued to skulk about their old haunts and the burial-place of their fathers, which is a high mound on the west bank of the river, and close upon the lake. These were collected by the Methodist missionaries into a village or settlement, about two miles farther on, where an attempt has been made to civilise and convert them.

The government has expended a large sum in aid of this charitable purpose, and about fifty log-huts have been constructed for the Indians, each hut being divided by a part.i.tion, and capable of lodging two or more families. There is also a chapel and a school-house. Peter Jones, otherwise Kahkewaquonaby, a half-caste Indian, is the second chief and religious teacher; he was in England a few years ago to raise contributions for his people, and married a young enthusiastic Englishwoman with a small property. She has recently quitted the village to return to Europe. There is, besides, a regular Methodist preacher established here, who cannot speak one word of the language of the natives, nor hold any communion with them, except through an interpreter. He complained of the mortality among the children, and the yearly diminution of numbers in the settlement. The greater number of those who remain are half-breeds, and of these, some of the young women and children are really splendid creatures; but the general appearance of the place and people struck me as gloomy. The Indians, whom I saw wandering and lounging about, and the squaws wrapped in dirty blankets, with their long black hair falling over their faces and eyes, filled me with compa.s.sion. When the tribe were first gathered together, they amounted to seven hundred men, women, and children; there are now about two hundred and twenty. The missionary and his wife looked dejected; he told me that the conference never allowed them (the missionaries) to remain with any congregation long enough to know the people, or take a personal interest in their welfare. In general the term of their residence in any settlement or district was from two to three years, and they were then exchanged for another. Among the inhabitants a few have cultivated the portion of land allotted to them, and live in comparative comfort; three or four women (half-caste) are favourably distinguished by the cleanliness of their houses, and general good conduct; and some of the children are remarkably intelligent, and can read both their own language and English; but these are exceptions, and dirt, indolence, and drunkenness, are but too general. Consumption is the prevalent disease, and carries off numbers[3] of these wretched people.

After pa.s.sing the Indian village, we plunged again into the depth of the green forests, through a road or path which presented every now and then ruts and abysses of mud, into which we sank nearly up to the axletree, and I began to appreciate feelingly the fitness of a Canadian wagon. On each side of this forest path the eye sought in vain to penetrate the labyrinth of foliage, and intermingled flowers of every dye, where life in myriad forms was creeping, humming, rustling in the air or on the earth, on which the morning dew still glittered under the thick shades.