Westward with the Prince of Wales Part 5

At Campbellton, a pretty, toy-like town, close up to La Baie de Chaleur, there is gathered a remnant of the Micmac Indians, whom the first settlers feared. They have a settlement of their own on a peak of the Baie, and one of their chiefs had travelled to Halifax to be among those who welcomed the son of the Great White Chief.

Campbellton let us into the lovely valley of the Matapedia, an enchanted spot where the river lolls on a broad bed through a grand country of grim hills and forests. Now and then, indeed, its channel is pinched into gorges where its water shines pallidly and angrily amid the crowded shadows of rock and tree; usually it is the nursemaid of rich, flat valleys and the friend of the little frame-house hamlets that are linked across its waters by a spidery bridge of wooden trestles. At times beneath the hills it is swift and combed by a thousand stony fingers, and at other times it is an idler in Arcadie, a dilettante stream that wanders in half a dozen f.e.c.kless channels over a desert of white stones, with here and there the green humpback of an island inviting the camper.

Beyond Matapedia we got the thrill of the run, an abrupt glimpse of the St. Lawrence, steel-blue and apparently infinite, its thirty miles of breadth yielding not a glimpse of the farther side. A short distance on, beyond Mont Joli, a place that might have come out of a sample box of French villages, the railway keeps the immense river company for the rest of the journey.

The valley broadened out into an immense flat plain with but few traces of the wilder hills of New Brunswick. About the line is a belt of prosperity forty miles deep, all of it worked by the habitant owners of the narrow farms, all of it so rich that in the whole area from the border to the city of Quebec there is not a poor farmer.

Before reaching Riviere du Loup we saw the high peaks of the Laurentine Mountains on the far side of the St. Lawrence, and on our side of the stream pa.s.sed a grim little islet called L'Islet au Ma.s.sacre, where a party of Micmac Indians, fleeing from the Iroquois in the old days, were caught as they hid in a deep cave, and killed by a great fire that their enemies built at the mouth.

We saw a few seals on the rocks of the river, but not a hint of the numbers that gave Riviere du Loup its name. It is a cameo of a town with falls sliding down-hill over a chute of jumbled rocks into a logging pool beneath.

Riviere du Loup is in the last lap of the journey to Quebec. There are a score or so of little hamlets, the names of which--St. Alexandre, St.

Andre, St. Pascal, St. Pacome, St. Valier and so on--sound like a reading from the Litany of the Saints. And, pa.s.sing the last of them, we saw across the narrowed St. Lawrence a trail of lace against the darkness of the Laurentine hills, a ma.s.s of filigree that moved and writhed, so that we understood when some one said:

"The Montmorency Falls."

A moment later we saw across the stream the city of Quebec, a hanging town of fairyland, with pinnacle and spire, bastion and citadel delicate against the quick sky. A city of romance and charm, to which we hurried by the very humdrum route of the steam ferry that crosses to it from the Levis side.

CHAPTER VI

QUEBEC

I

Quebec is not merely historic: it suggests history. It has the grand manner. One feels in one's bones that it is a city of a splendid past.

The first sight of Quebec piled up on its opposite bluff where the waters of the St. Charles swell the mighty volume of the St. Lawrence convinces one that this grave city is the cradle of civilization in the West, the overlord of the river road to the sea and the heart of history and romance for Canada.

One does not require prompting to recognize that history has to go back centuries to reach the day when Cartier first landed here; or that Champlain figured bravely in its story in a brave and romantic era of the world, and that it was he who saw its importance as a commanding point of the great waterway that struck deep into the heart of the rich dominion--though he did think that dominion was a fragment of the fabulous Indies with a door into the rich realms of China.

Instinct seems to tell one that on the lifting plain behind the bulldog Citadel, Montcalm lost and died, and Wolfe died and won.

One knows, too, that from this city thick with spires, streams of Christianity and civilization flowed west and north and south to quicken the whole barbaric continent; that it was the nucleus that concentrated all the energy of the vast New World.

II

From the decks of the three war vessels, the _Renown_ and the escorting cruisers, Quebec must have seemed like a city of a dream hanging against the quiet sky of a glorious evening.

The piled-up ma.s.s of the city on its abrupt cape is romantic, and suggests the drama of a Rhine castle with a grace and a significance that is French. On that evening of August 21st, when the strings and blobs of colour from a mult.i.tude of flags picked out the cl.u.s.tering of houses that climbed Cape Diamond to the grey walls of the Citadel, the city from the St. Lawrence had an appearance glowing and fantastic.

From Quebec the three fine ships steaming in line up the blue waters of the river were a sight dramatic and beautiful, though from the heights and against the wall of cliffs on the Levis side, a mile across stream, the cruisers were strangely dwarfed, and even _Renown_ appeared a small but desirable toy.

In keeping with the general atmosphere of the town and toy-like ships, Quebec herself put a touch of the fantastic into the charm of her greeting.

As the cruisers dressed ship, and joined with the guns of the Citadel in the salute, there soared from the city itself scores of maroons.

From the flash and smoke of their bursts there fluttered down many coloured things. Caught by the wind, these things opened out into parachutes, from which were suspended large silk flags. Soon the sky was flecked with the bright, tricoloured bubbles of parachutes, bearing Jacks and Navy Ensigns, Tricolours and Royal Standards down the wind.

The official landing at King's Wharf was full of characteristic colour also. It was in a wide, open s.p.a.ce right under the grey rock upon which the Citadel is reared. In this square, tapestried with flags, and in a little canvas pavilion of bright red and white, the Prince met the leading sons of Quebec, the French-Canadian and the English-Canadian; the Bishop of the English cathedral in gaiters and ap.r.o.n, the Bishops of the Catholics in corded hats, scarlet gloves and long ca.s.socks. Sailors and soldiers, women in bright and smart gowns gave the reception a glow and vivacity that had a quality true to Quebec.

From this short ceremony the Prince drove through the quaint streets to the Citadel. In the lower town under the rock his way led through a quarter that might well stage a Stanley Weyman romance. It is a quarter where, between high-shouldered, straight-faced houses, run the narrowest of streets, some of them, like Sous le Cap, so cramped that it is merely practical to use windows as the supports for clothes-lines, and to hang the alleys with banners of drying washing.

In these cramped streets named with the names of saints, are sudden little squares, streets that are mere staircases up to the cliff-top, and others that deserve the name of one of them, The Mountain. In these narrow canyons, through which the single-decked electric trams thunder like mammoths who have lost their way, are most of the commercial houses and nearly all the mud of the city.

At the end of this olden quarter, merging from the very air of antiquity in the streets, Quebec, with a characteristic Canadian gesture, adopts modernity. That is the vivid thing about the city. It is not merely historical: it is up-to-date. It is not merely the past, but it is the future also. At the end of the old, cramped streets stands Quebec's future--its docks.

These great dockyards at the very toe of the cape are the latest things of their kind. They have been built to take the traffic of tomorrow as well as today. Greater ships than those yet built can lie in safe water alongside the huge new concrete quays. Great ships can go into dry dock here, or across the water in the shipyards of Levis. They even build or put together ships of large tonnage, and while we were there, there were ships in half sections; by themselves too big to be floated down from the lakes through the locks, they had come down from the building slips in floatable halves to be riveted together in Quebec.

A web of railways serves these great harbour basins, and the latest mechanical loading gear can whip cargo out of ships or into them at record speed and with infinite ease. Huge elevators--one concrete monster that had been reared in a Canadian hustle of seven days--can stream grain by the million tons into holds, while troops, pa.s.sengers and the whole mechanics of human transport can be handled with the greatest facility.

The Prince went up the steep cobbled street of The Mountain under the grey, solid old masonry of the Battery that hangs over the town in front of Laval University, that with the Archbishop's palace looks like a piece of old France translated bodily to Canada.

So he came to the big, green Place des Armes, not now a place of arms, and at that particular moment not green, but as thick as a gigantic flower-bed with the pretty dresses of pretty women--and there is all the French charm in the beauty of the women of Quebec--and with the khaki and commonplace of soldiers and civilians. A mighty and enthusiastic crowd that did not allow its French accent to hinder the shout of welcome it had caught up from the throng that lined the slopes of The Mountain.

From this point the route twisted to the right along the Grande Allee, going first between tall and upright houses, jalousied and severe faced, to where a strip of side road swung it left again, and up hill to the Citadel, where His Royal Highness lived during his stay.

From the Place des Armes the profile of the town pushes back along the heights to the peak on which is the Citadel, a squat and ma.s.sive structure that seems to have grown rather than to have been built from the living rock upon which it is based.

Between the Citadel and the Place des Armes there is a long, grey stone wall above the green glacis of the cliff. It has the look of a military wall, and it is not a military wall. It supports merely a superb promenade, Dufferin Terrace, a great plank walk poised sheer above the river, the like of which would be hard to equal anywhere. On this the homely people of Quebec take the air in a manner more sumptuous than many of the most aristocratic resorts in Europe.

At the eastern end of this terrace, and forming the wing of the Place des Armes, is the medieval structure of the Chateau Frontenac, a building not really more antique than the area of hotels _de luxe_, of which it is an extremely fine example, but so planned by its designers as to fit delightfully into the antique texture of the town.

Below and shelving away eastward again is the congested old town, through which the Prince had come, and behind Citadel and promenade, and stretching over the plateau of the cape, is a town of broad and comely streets, many trees and great parks as modern as anything in Canada.

That night the big Dufferin Terrace was thronged by people out to see the firework display from the Citadel, and to watch the illuminations of the city and of the ships down on the calm surface of the water. It was rather an unexpected crowd. There were the s.e.xes by the thousands packed together on that big esplanade, listening to the band, looking at the fireworks and lights, the whole town was there in a holiday mood, and there was not the slightest hint of horseplay or disorder.

The crowd enjoyed itself calmly and gracefully; there were none of those syncopated sounds or movements which in an English crowd show that youth is being served with pleasure. The quiet enjoyment of this good-tempered and vivacious throng is the marked att.i.tude of such Canadian gatherings. I saw in other towns big crowds gathered at the dances held in the street to celebrate the Prince's visit. Although thousands of people of all grades and tempers came together to dance or to watch the dancing, there was never the slightest sign of rowdyism or disorder.

On this and the next two nights Quebec added to its beauty. All the public buildings were outlined in electric light, so that it looked more than ever a fairy city hanging in the air. The cruisers in the stream were outlined, deck and spar and stack, in light, and _Renown_ had poised between her masts a bright set of the Prince of Wales's feathers, the lights of the whole group of ships being mirrored in the river. On Friday _Renown_ gave a display of fireworks and searchlights, the beauty of which was doubled by the reflections in the water.

III

Friday and Sat.u.r.day (August 22 and 23) were strenuous days for the Prince. He visited every notable spot in the brilliant and curious town where one spoke first in French, and English only as an afterthought; where even the blind beggar appeals to the charitable in two languages; where the citizens ride in up-to-date motor-cars and the visitors in the high-slung, swing-shaped horse calache; where the traffic takes the French side of the road; where the shovel hats and ca.s.socks of priests are as commonplace as everyday; where the vivacity of France is fused into the homely good-fellowship of the Colonial in a manner quite irresistible.

He began Friday in a wonderful crimson room in the Provincial Parliament building, where he received addresses in French, and answered them in the same tongue.

It was a remarkable room, this glowing chamber set in the handsome Parliament house that looks down over a sweep of gra.s.s, the hipped roofs and the pinnacles of the town to the St. Lawrence. It was a great room with a floor of crimson and walls of crimson and white.

Over the mellow oak that made a backing to the Prince's das was a striking picture of Champlain looking out from the deck of his tiny sloop _The Gift of G.o.d_ to the sh.o.r.e upon which Quebec was to rise.

The people in that chamber were not less colourful than the room itself. Bright dresses, the antique robes of Les Membres du Conseil Executif, the violet and red of clerics, with the blue, red and khaki of fighting men were on the floor and in the mellow oak gallery.

Two addresses were read to His Royal Highness, twice, first in French and then in English, and each address in each language was prefaced by his list of t.i.tles--a long list, sonorous enough in French, but with an air of thirdly and lastly when oft repeated. One could imagine his relief when the fourth Earl of Carrick had been negotiated, and he was steering safely for the Lord of the Isles. A strain on any man, especially when one of the readers' pince-nez began to contract some of the deep feeling of its master, and to slide off at every comma, to be thrust back with his ever-deepening emotion.

The Prince answered in one language, and that French, and the surprise and delight of his hearers was profound. They felt that he had paid them the most graceful of compliments, and his fluency as well as his happiness of expression filled them with enthusiasm. He showed, too, that he recognized what French Canada had done in the war by his reference to the Vingtdeuxieme Battalion, whose "conduite intrepide" he had witnessed in France. It was a touch of knowledge that was certainly well chosen, for the province of Quebec, which sent forty thousand men by direct enlistment to the war, has, thanks to the obscurantism of politics, received rather less than its due.

From the atmosphere of governance the Prince pa.s.sed to the atmosphere of the seminary, driving down the broad Grand Allee to the University of Laval, called after the first Bishop of Quebec and Canada. It has been since its foundation not merely the fountain head of Christianity on the American continent, but the armoury of science, in which all the arts of forestry, agriculture, medicine and the like were put at the service of the settler in his fight against the primitive wilds.