First impressions of the New World on two travellers from the Old, in the autumn of 1858Trotter, Isabella Strange
History
First impressions of the New World on two travellers from the Old, in the autumn of 1858
Trotter, Isabella Strange
Canada -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
We left Montreal early in the afternoon of the 27th, in company with Mr.
and Mrs. Bailey. He is one of the managers of the Grand Trunk Railway,
and came with us as far as Quebec, as a sort of guard of honour or
escort, papa having been specially commended to the care of the
_employes_ on this line. Both he and his wife are English. We crossed
the St. Lawrence in a steam-ferry to join the railway, and as long as
it was light we had a most delightful journey through a highly
cultivated country, covered with small farms, which came in quick
succession on both sides of the road. These farms are all the property
of French Canadians, and on each one there is a wooden dwelling-house,
with barns and out-houses attached to it, and the land runs down from
the front of the tenement to the railroad. There is no hedge to be seen
anywhere, and these long strips of fields looked very like allotment
lands in England, though on a larger scale. These proprietors have been
possessors of the soil from the time of the first settlement of the
French in Canada, and the farms have suffered from the subdivision of
property consequent on the French law of succession. They are so close
together that, when seen at a distance, the houses look like a
continuous line of street as far as the eye can reach, but we soon lost
sight of them in the obscurity occasioned by forests and the approach of
night. We passed many log huts, which, though very rude, do not seem
uncomfortable dwellings.
We saw little of the country as we approached Quebec, and were conscious
only of crossing the Chaudiere river and of going along its banks for
some way, and afterwards along those of the St. Lawrence, till we
reached Point Levi, opposite Quebec. Here we got into a steamer to cross
the river, and from the steamer we had a grand view of the citadel and
town of Quebec, the tin spires shining jointly with the moon and the
comet; for we beg to say we do not require telescopes of high power, as
we see by the papers you do in England, to detect the latter luminary,
which really does look here almost as if it added to the light of the
night. Papa and I differ greatly as to the length of its tail. I say it
looks two yards long, but papa says it is difficult to tell this, but
that it is really about a degree and a half in length, or about six
diameters of the moon. The nucleus is larger and brighter than any star
in the Great Bear, and these are all bright here to a degree of which
you can form no idea. The planets look as large as fourpenny-pieces.
Papa has made me reduce them to this estimate, as I originally said as
large as sixpences; but he questions altogether my appreciation of the
size of the heavenly bodies, which do all seem wonderfully large to my
eyes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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