A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-slavery and reform papers. — John Shaqi
A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-slavery and reform papers.Thoreau, Henry David
History
A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-slavery and reform papers.
Thoreau, Henry David
Brown, John, 1800-1859; Québec (Province) -- Description and travel; Slavery -- United States
_bonnet rouge_, or red woollen or worsted cap, or sometimes blue or
gray, looking to us as if they had got up with their night-caps on, and,
in fact, I afterwards found that they had. Their clothes were of the
cloth of the country, _étoffe du pays_, gray or some other plain color.
The women looked stout, with gowns that stood out stiffly, also, for the
most part, apparently of some home-made stuff. We also saw some
specimens of the more characteristic winter dress of the Canadian, and I
have since frequently detected him in New England by his coarse gray
homespun capote and picturesque red sash, and his well-furred cap, made
to protect his ears against the severity of his climate.
It drizzled all day, so that the roads did not improve. We began now to
meet with wooden crosses frequently, by the roadside, about a dozen feet
high, often old and toppling down, sometimes standing in a square wooden
platform, sometimes in a pile of stones, with a little niche containing
a picture of the Virgin and Child, or of Christ alone, sometimes with a
string of beads, and covered with a piece of glass to keep out the rain,
with the words, _pour la vierge_, or _Iniri_, on them. Frequently, on
the cross-bar, there would be quite a collection of symbolical
knickknacks, looking like an Italian’s board; the representation in wood
of a hand, a hammer, spikes, pincers, a flask of vinegar, a ladder, &c.,
the whole, perchance, surmounted by a weathercock; but I could not look
at an honest weathercock in this walk without mistrusting that there was
some covert reference in it to St. Peter. From time to time we passed a
little one-story chapel-like building, with a tin-roofed spire, a
shrine, perhaps it would be called, close to the pathside, with a
lattice door, through which we could see an altar, and pictures about
the walls; equally open, through rain and shine, though there was no
getting into it. At these places the inhabitants kneeled and perhaps
breathed a short prayer. We saw one school-house in our walk, and
listened to the sounds which issued from it; but it appeared like a
place where the process, not of enlightening, but of obfuscating the
mind was going on, and the pupils received only so much light as could
penetrate the shadow of the Catholic Church. The churches were very
picturesque, and their interior much more showy than the dwelling-houses
promised. They were of stone, for it was ordered, in 1699, that that
should be their material. They had tinned spires, and quaint ornaments.
That of l’Ange Gardien had a dial on it, with the Middle Age Roman
numerals on its face, and some images in niches on the outside. Probably
its counterpart has existed in Normandy for a thousand years. At the
church of Chateau Richer, which is the next parish to l’Ange Gardien, we
read, looking over the wall, the inscriptions in the adjacent
churchyard, which began with, “_Ici git_” or “_Repose_” and one over a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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