Europe -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
I forget just where I left off, whether I had brought my journal up to
our leaving Memphremagog or not. The last day there was as pleasant
as the rest. The young folks played croquet and American bowls all the
morning, while I lay on the grass watching for humming-birds and talking
occasional politics to any one who would join me. At about twelve a
retired judge, Day by name, who lives four or five miles off, drove over
with a member of the Government (I forget his name) who was to start
from the pier below the house in the lake steamer. Mr. Allan owns this
steamer, which stops at his pier whenever he runs up a flag; so you
see the privileged classes are not extinct by any means in the British
dominion in the new world. Now the Judge, having a seat in his light
sort of phaeton, proposed to drive me over to the post-office, about
four miles off, where he was going, and to bring me back to luncheon.
So I embarked behind his two strong little trotting nags and had a most
interesting drive. The roads were not worse than many Devonshire lanes,
and where the pitches were steepest, the stout little nags made nothing
of them.
The views of the lake were exquisite, and the Judge one of the
pleasantest of men. He had been employed in 1865 on a mission to
Washington, and gave me very graphic accounts of his interviews with
Lincoln and the other leading men there, and confirmed many of my own
views as to the comparative chances of the two great sections of our
race in the new world in the future. He is less apprehensive of Canada
joining the United States than most men of his standing, and I think
has good reason for his confidence. Material interest will perhaps for
a time (or rather, after a time, for at present it is very doubtful on
which side they weigh) sway in the direction of annexation to the United
States, but the ablest and most energetic of the younger men of the
cultivated classes are so strongly bent on developing a distinct
national life, that I expect to see them carry their country for
independence rather than annexation, when the time comes, if it ever
should, of a final cutting of the ropes which bind them to us. After
luncheon we went off in the steam yacht to a bay in the lake, and then
in row boats four or five miles up the bay into the heart of the hills,
where we saw bald-headed eagles, and black and white king-fishers
five times the size of ours, and after a very interesting and pleasant
excursion got back to dinner, finishing the evening with dancing. At
five next morning we heard the steamer’s whistle calling us. The young
ladies were up to give us a cup of coffee and parting good words, and
then we-steamed down for Newport, where we were to take the rail through
the Connecticut valley to Boston. On the Newport wharf which joins the
station we said good-bye to Allan and Stephen, and shall carry away most
charming memories of our stay in Canada. General Lindsay and Eyre went
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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