Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2Bonnycastle, Richard Henry, Sir
History
Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2
Bonnycastle, Richard Henry, Sir
Canada -- Description and travel; Ontario -- Description and travel
The dinner on board was by no means a luxury, for, although very good,
the company was numerous, the cabin near the boiler, all the dishes
smoking, the room low and small, and the thermometer as aforesaid on
deck, so that we literally were steaming, for it must have been close
to the boiling point.
Thursday morning, the 14th of July, was as hot as ever; and if I
could, I would not have crossed over to the United States, where the
famous city of Detroit stared me in the face on the other side of the
river, about as broad as the Thames just below bridge.
It was, like all recent American cities, very staring and very
juvenile, with large piles of brick buildings scattered amidst white
painted wooden ones, and covered an immense space, with many churches,
looking very fine at a distance, an immense crowd of very large,
bright, white, and green, coarsely painted and loosely built
steam-vessels at the wharfs, and small, dirty, steam ferry-boats,
constantly plying to and from the British shore.
Windsor is a small village, scattered, as most Canadian villages are,
with a little barrack, in which a detachment of the Royal Canadian
Rifle corps is stationed, to watch the frontier. The Americans are now
building a large fort on the opposite side.
I left Windsor at nine a.m., in a light waggon and pair, and rolled
along the bank of the river to Sandwich, the county or district town,
two miles from Windsor, opposite to which the Americans are building a
fortification of some size, but apparently only an extensive
earth-work.
It is a very pleasant drive along the banks of the Straitened River,
or Detroit, close to the water, and occasionally in it, to refresh the
horses. The population, chiefly French Canadians and Indians, occupy
the roadside in detached farms; the Canadian huts and houses being, as
in Lower Canada, invariably whitewashed and planted at short
intervals.
We saw the Indians both industrious and idle: some were hoeing maize,
others harvesting wheat, and the _habitants_ were also very busy in
the fields.
The idle Indians, the most numerous, were lounging along the banks,
under the shade of melancholy boughs, as naked as they were born,
bathing, smoking, or making baskets. In the intense heat I envied
them, and thought of the days of Paradise when tailors were not.
We stopped in this intense heat at Maitre Samondon's tavern, having
passed Sandwich, which has church, chapel, jail, and court-house, and
is plentifully inhabited by French, whose domiciles evidently date
from its first settlement. I saw some of the largest pear-trees here
that I had ever seen; they were as big as good-sized walnut-trees in
England.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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