Sketches in Canada, and rambles among the red menJameson, Mrs. (Anna)
History
Sketches in Canada, and rambles among the red men
Jameson, Mrs. (Anna)
Indians of North America -- Canada; Ontario -- Description and travel
There are no water-fowl now as in the winter--when driven from the
ice-bound shores and shallows of the lake, they came up here to seek
their food, and sported and wheeled amid the showers of spray. They have
returned to their old quiet haunts; sometimes I miss them: they were a
beautiful variety in the picture.
* * * * *
BUFFALO.
After an absence of a few days, during which there had raged a perpetual
storm, I came back to the Clifton Hotel, to find my beautiful Falls
quite spoiled and discoloured. Instead of the soft aquamarine hue,
relieved with purest white, a dull dirty brown now imbued the waters.
This is owing to the shallowness of Lake Erie, where every storm turns
up the muddy bed from the bottom, and discolours the whole river. The
spray, instead of hovering in light clouds round and above the
cataracts, was beaten down, and rolled in volumes round their base; then
by the gusty winds driven along the surface of the river hither and
thither, covering everything in the neighbourhood with a small rain. I
sat down to draw, and in a moment the paper was wet through. It is as if
all had been metamorphosed during my absence--and I feel very
disconsolate.
The whole of this district between the two great lakes is superlatively
beautiful, and was the first settled district in Upper Canada; it is now
the best cultivated. The population is larger in proportion to its
extent than that of any other district. In Niagara, and in the
neighbouring district of Gore, many fruits come to perfection, which are
not found to thrive in other parts of the province, and cargoes of
fruit are sent yearly to the cities of Lower Canada, where the climate
is much more severe and the winter longer than with us.
On the other side the country is far less beautiful, and they say less
fertile, but rich in activity and in population; and there are within
the same space at least half a dozen flourishing towns. Our speculating
energetic Yankee neighbours, not satisfied with their Manchester, their
manufactories, and their furnaces, and their mill "privileges," have
opened a railroad from Lewiston to Buffalo, thus connecting Lake Erie
with the Erie Canal. On our side, we have the Welland Canal, a
magnificent work, of which the province is justly proud; it unites Lake
Erie with Lake Ontario.
Yet from the Falls all along the shores of the Lake Erie to the Grand
River and far beyond it, the only place we have approaching to a town is
Chippewa, just above the rapids, as yet a small village, but lying
immediately in the road from the Western States to the Falls. From
Buffalo to this place the Americans run a steam-boat daily; they have
also planned a suspension bridge across the Niagara river, between
Lewiston and Queenston. Another village, Dunnville, on the Grand River,
is likely to be the commercial depôt of that part of the province; it is
situated where the Welland Canal joins Lake Erie.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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