Book: Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861




Few, if any, of the older people of Lorette speak English,--Huron and
French being the only languages at their command. Since the building of
the great reservoir, however, many of the rising generation are picking
up the English tongue in its roundest Irish form. Previously, matters
were the reverse. I once noticed a handsome, brown-faced boy there, who
used to come about with a bow and arrows, soliciting coppers, which were
placed one by one in a split stick, shot at, and pocketed by the archer,
if hit,--as they almost always were. He spoke Indian and French, and I
took him for an olive-branch of the tribe; but, on questioning him, he
told me that his name was Bill Coogan, and that he first saw the light,
I think, in Cork, Ireland.

There is one charming feature at Lorette,--a winding, dashing cascade,
which boils and creams down with splendid fury through a deep gorge
fenced with pied and tumbled rocks, and overhung by gnarly-boughed
cedars, pines, and birches. There is, or at least there was, a crumbling
old saw-mill on a ledge of rock nearly half-way up the torrent. It was
in keeping with the scene, and I hope it is there still; but it was very
shaky when I last saw it, and has probably made an _eboulement_ down to
the foot of the fall before now. Some short distance above the head of
the fall, near the bridge by which the two villages are connected,
the scene is pictorially damaged by a stark, staring paper-mill, the
dominant colors of which are Solferino-red and pea-green. This, a
comparatively new feature in the landscape, is not visible from below,
however, and it is from there that the fall is seen to best advantage.

To the eye of the experienced fisherman, it is obvious that the St.
Charles, with its sparkling rapids, and the deep, swirling pools formed
by its numerous "elbows," must erstwhile have been a chosen, retreat of
the noble salmon. Even now, notwithstanding the obstructions caused by
the immense deposits of ship-yard refuse at its mouth, a few of these
fine fish are caught every season by one or two persevering anglers
from Quebec,--men who thrive on disappointment,--whose fish-hooks are
miniature anchors of Hope. Lake St. Charles, from which the river
derives its existence and its name, is a wild, beautiful tarn, about
five miles above Lorette, embosomed in hills and woods. There are good
bass in that lake, by whose shores there dwells--or dwelt--an ancient
fisherman called Gabriel, who supplied anglers with canoes, and paddled
them about the waters.

Lorette, although undistinguished by a glance from the mild blue eyes of
the Premier Prince of England, was flashed upon, years ago, by the awful
light that gleamed from the dark, fierce ones of Hamlet, Prince of
Denmark. This is how I came to know it.

Fifteen years ago,--it was on the seventeenth of August, 1845,--I made
my first pilgrimage to Lorette, in company with a friend. We wandered at
large through the village, talking _patois_ to the swarthy damsels, and
picking up Indian knick-knacks, as we went. At last, fired with the
ambition of doing a distinguished thing, we proposed calling upon the
head chief of the village, whose name, I think, was Simon, but might
possibly have been Peter,--for I regret to say that my memory is rather
misty upon that important point. That personage was absent from home;
but we were hospitably received by his father, who also appeared to be
his butler, as he was engaged in bottling off some root-beer into stone
blacking-jars, when we entered. I suppose the chief's father must once
have been a chief himself, and that his menial position arose from the
fact of his appearance being rather disreputable. He was a decrepit and
very dirty old man, in a tight blue frock-coat, and swathed as to his
spindle shanks with scarlet leggings. Sitting by a small window at the
farther end of the large, bare room, was the prettiest little Huronite
damsel I ever saw, rather fair than dark, and very neatly attired in a
costume partly Indian. This little girl--a granddaughter of the dirty
old man, as that person informed us--was occupied in tying up some small
bundles of what the Canadians call _racine_--a sweet-smelling kind of
rush-grass, sold by them in the Quebec market, and used like _sachets_,
for imparting a pleasant odor to linen garments. After some conversation
of a general character, the old man requested us to write our names in
his visitors' book, which was a long, dirty volume, similar in form to
those usually seen upon bar-counters. In this book we were delighted to
find the autographs of many dear friends, of whom we little expected
to meet with traces in this nook of the North. Mark Tapley and Oliver
Twist, for instance, had visited the place in company some two years
before. There could be no mistake about it; for there were the two
names, in characteristic, but different manuscript, bound together
by the mystic circumflex that indicated them to be friends and
travelling-companions. The record covered a period of ten years; but
was that sufficient to account for the appearance of Shakspeare on its
pages? And yet there he was; and in merry mood he must have been, when
he came to Lorette,--for he wrote himself down "Bill," and dashed off
a little picture of himself after the signature, in a bold, if not
artistic manner. Our friend Titmouse was there, too, represented by
his famous declaration commencing, "Tittlebat Titmouse is my name." He
seemed to have taken particularly fast hold of the memory of the old
Huron, who described him as a tremendous-looking, big person, with
large black whiskers, and remembered having enjoyed a long pull at a
brandy-flask carried by him. Of course there can be no doubt about that
man being the real Tittlebat of our affections. Of the other signatures
in the Huronite album, I chiefly remember that of M.F. Tupper, which I
looked upon at the time as a base forgery, and do aver my belief now
that it was nothing else: for the aged sagamore described the writer of
that signature as a young, cheerful, and communicative man, who smoked a
short, black pipe, and had spaniels with him. Could my friend, could I,
venture to inscribe our humble names among this galaxy of the good and
great? Not so: and yet, to pacify the Huronite patriarch's thirst for
autographs, we wrote signatures in his brown old book; and if that
curious volume is still in existence, the names of Don Caesar de Bazan
and Sir Lucius O'Trigger, Bart., will be found closely linked together
on a particular page with the circumflex of friendship.

And now the old man, delighted with the addition to his autographs,
proposed to treat us to an exhibition of several medals gained by him
for deeds of valor when he was a warrior, and previously to his having
entered upon the career of a bottler of root-beverages. He had silver
disks presented to him by at least two of Thackeray's Georges, a couple
from William IV., and I think one from her present Majesty, Queen
Victoria. All of these he touched with reverence, and not until he had
purified his hands upon a dirty towel. After we had duly admired these
decorations, and listened with patience to the old man's garrulous talk
about them, he told us that he had yet another to show,--one presented
to him many years ago by a great man of that day,--a man embalmed
for all posterity on account of his unrivalled performances upon the
tight-rope,--a man of whom he reduced all description to mendicancy in
designating him as _un danseur tres-renomme sur la corde tendue_. The
medal was a small silver one, and it bore the following inscription:--

FROM EDMUND KEAN, THE BRITISH ACTOR,

TO TOUSSAHISSA, CHIEF OF THE HURON INDIANS. 1826.

And such is fame! It appears that Kean, always fond of excitement, had
organized a tremendous _pow-wow_ among these poor specimens of the red
man, on his visit to Quebec. They adopted him,--constituted him a chief
of their tribe. It would be interesting to have a full account of the
great passionist's demeanor upon that solemn occasion. Did he harrow
up his hearers with a burst from "Othello" or a deep-sea groan from
"Hamlet," and then create a revulsion of feeling by somersaulting over
the centre-fire of the circle and standing on his head before it,
grinning diabolically at the incensed pot? Or did he, foreshadowing the
coming Blondin, then unplanned, stretch his tight-rope across the small
Niagara that flashes down into the chasm of the St. Charles, and,
kicking his boots off, carry some "mute, inglorious" Colcord over in an
Indian bark basket? If he did such things, the old Huronite was foggy
upon the subject and reserved, limiting his assertions to the statement,
that "the British actor" was a _farceur_, and likewise _un danseur
tres-renomme sur la corde tendue_.

Long afterwards, when I resided at Quebec, my visits to Lorette were
very frequent. Once, as I passed along the street, or road, between the
straggling log-houses, I was accosted, in good English, by a fat and
very jovial old squaw, who was attired in a green silk dress, sported
a turban, and appeared to be altogether a superior kind of person. On
inquiry, I learned from her that she was the widow of a former chief of
the tribe, and came originally from Upper Canada, where she learned to
speak English. Her husband had been presented with many medals, she
said;--would I like to see them? I followed the old lady into her
dwelling, where she showed me several silver medals, which I thought I
recognized as the same exhibited by the aged Huronite with the red legs.
But the Kean medal was not among them; nor could I, by any system of
description in my power, recall the features of the relic to the memory
of the old squaw.

Subsequently, I tried many times to trace it, but without success. Many
strangers visit Lorette during the summer season, and it is possible
that some virtuoso, struck by the associative value of the relic, may
have prevailed on its owner to part with it for a consideration. There
are people who would have possessed themselves of it without the
exchange of a consideration. Should this meet the eye of its present
possessor, and if so be that the medal came into his hands on the
consideration principle, so that he need not be ashamed of it, he will
confer a favor by giving the correct reading of the Indian name. For
"Toussahissa," as I have rendered it, is not exact, but only as near
as I can make it out from my pencil-memoranda, which, written in a
note-book that did occasional duty as a fly-book, have been partially
obliterated in that spot by the contact of a large and remarkably gaudy
salmon-fly, whose repose between the leaves is disturbed, perhaps, by
aquatic nightmares of salmon gaping at him from whirling eddies.

Between Lorette and the unexplored wilderness that stretches away to
polar desolation there is but a narrow selvage of civilization. Looking
toward it from my windows at Quebec, I could see the blue, serrated
ridge of highlands beyond which the surveyor has never yet run his
lines,--beyond which the surveyor's lines would be superfluous, indeed,
and futile; for the soil is of the barren, rocky kind, and the timber of
the scrubby. Not quite so savage is this frontier, indeed, as the wild
precincts described by the Nebraska editor, whose meditations for a
leader used to be cut short, occasionally, by the bellowing of the
shaggy bison at his window, or the incursion of the redoubtable
"grizzly" into his wood-shed where the elk-meat hung. But, in the clear,
cold nights that precede the punctual and distinct winter of these
regions, the black bears often come down from their fastnesses amid the
wild ridges, and astonish the drowsy _habitant_ and his household by
their pranks among his pigs and calves: also in the spring.

In a small settlement of this wild tract, a few miles to the north-east
of Lorette, there dwelt, some six or seven years ago, a poor farmer
named Cantin, who added to the meagre fare afforded by his sterile acres
such stray birds and hares as he could get within range of his old
musket, without risking himself very far away from the isolated
clearing. One night in the early part of May, when the snow had
disappeared from the open grounds, but lingered yet in the ravines and
rocky thickets, a dreadful tumult among the cattle of the settlement
indicated the presence of bear. Cantin had the old firelock ready, but
the night was dark and unfavorable for active measures. At gray morning,
traces of the nocturnal intruder were visible, and that close by the
_cabane_ in which Cantin lived, in the little inclosure near which a
struggle had evidently taken place, resulting in the discomfiture of a
yearling calf, portions of which were discovered in the thickets a short
distance from the clearing. Here the patches of snow gave ample evidence
of the passage of a very large bear. When the sun was well up,
Cantin sallied forth alone, with his gun and a small supply of
ammunition,--unluckily for him, a very small supply. He did not return
to dinner. Shots were heard in the course of the day, at a considerable
distance in the hills; and when the afternoon was far advanced, and
Cantin had not made his appearance, several of his neighbors--all the
men of the settlement, indeed, and they made but a small party--set out
in search of him. The snow-patches facilitated their search; and, having
tracked him a good way, they suddenly saw him kneeling by a tree at the
end of an open glade, with his hands clasped in an attitude of prayer.
He was a frightful spectacle when they raised his _bonnet-bleu_, which
had fallen down over his face. The entire facial mask had been torn
clean from the skull by a fearful sweep of the bear's paw, and hung from
his collar-bone by a strip of skin. He must have been dead for some
hours. Fifty yards from where he knelt, the bear was found lying under
some bushes, quite dead, and with two bullet-holes through its carcass.
Cantin, it appeared, had expended all his ammunition, and the wounded
beast had executed a terrible vengeance on him while the life-blood
was welling through the last bullet-hole. I saw this bear brought into
Quebec, in a cart, on the following day; and it is to be seen yet, I
believe, or at least the taxidermal presentment of it is, in the shop of
a furrier in John Street of that city. An enterprising druggist bought
up the little fat left in the animal after its long winter's fast; and
such was the demand among sensational people for gallipots of "grease of
the bear that killed Cantin," that it seemed as if fashion had ordained
the wearing of hair "on end."

Of the other wild beasts of this hill-district, the commonest is that
known to the inhabitants as the _loup-cervier_,--a name oddly enough
misconstructed by a writer on Canadian sports into "Lucifer." This is
the true lynx,--a huge cat with long and remarkably thick legs, paws in
which dangerous claws are sheathed, and short tail. Its principal prey
is the common or Northern hare, which abounds in these regions: but at
times the _loup-cervier_ will invade the poultry-yards; and he is even
held to account, now and then, for the murder of innocent lambs, and the
disappearance of tender piglings whose mothers were so negligent as to
let them stray alone into the brushwood. These fierce cats have been
killed, occasionally, quite close to Quebec. When thus driven to
approach populous districts, it must be from scarcity of their
accustomed food; for they are usually very savage and ravenous, when
found in such places. I know an instance, myself, in which a gentleman
of Quebec, riding a little way from the town, was suddenly pounced upon
and attacked by a _loup-cervier_, near the Plains of Abraham. He struck
the animal with his whip several times, but it persisted in following
him, and he got rid of it only by putting spurs to his horse and beating
it in speed. The animal was killed soon afterwards, near the same place.

I had heard of another variety of wildcat, seen at rare intervals in the
same districts. The _habitant_ is rather foggy on the subject of zoology
in general, and my attempts to obtain a satisfactory description of this
animal were futile. Some of the definitions of this rare _chat-sauvage,_
indeed, might have answered for specifications of a griffin, or of a
vampire-bat. At last, one day, when walking about in the market-place
at Quebec, I saw a crowd assembled round a gray-clad countryman, who
presided over a small box on which the words _Chat-Sauvage_ were
painted. Now was my time to set the question at rest. I invested
sixpence in the show. When a good number of sixpences had been paid in,
the proprietor opened his box, out from which crawled a fat, familiar
raccoon, apparently as much at home in the market-place as he could have
been in the middle of his native swamp. And this was the mysterious
"wild-cat" about which I had asked so many questions and heard so many
stories!

It is noticeable that thunder-storms, travelling from the westward
toward Quebec, usually diverge across the valley of the St. Charles in
the direction of Lorette, and coast along the ridge of ground on which
that place is situated to Charlesbourg, a small village lying about four
miles to the east of it, upon the ridge. There the storms appear to
culminate, pouring out the full vials of their wrath upon the devoted
_habitans_ of white-cotted Charlesbourg. The wayfarer who wends through
this rustical district will hardly fail to observe the prevailing taste
for lightning-rods. The smallest cottage has at least two of these
fire-irons, one upon each gable; houses of more pretensions are provided
with an indefinite number; and the big white church has its purple roof
so bristled with them, that the pause which a flash of lightning must
necessarily make before deciding by which of them to come down must
enable any tolerably active person to get out of the way in good time.
And yet, with all these defenders of the faithful, I remember how the
steeple was taken clean off the big white church, in splinters, one wild
night after I had watched a long array of cloud-chariots rolling heavily
away eastward along the ridge: also, how a farmer's handsome daughter,
the belle of the village, sat upright and dead upon a sofa when people
came again to their eyesight after a blinding flash. So much for
lightning-rods!--so much for the mystic iron!

When the day of the _Fete Dieu_ comes round, Quebec and its neighboring
villages are all alive for the celebration of the _fete_, which takes
place on the following Sunday. Then the great suburb of St. Roch is
a sight to see. Every street of it is converted into a green alley,
embowered with young pine-trees, and flaunting with banners temporarily
constructed out of all available pieces of dry-goods, lent by the
devoted shop-keepers of the olden Church. Most extraordinary lithographs
of holy personages are hung out upon the door-posts and walls of every
house. Bowers shading curious little shrines meet the eye everywhere.
The white tables of the little shrines are loaded with gilt and
tinselled offerings in immense variety. Curious bosses, like
lace-pillows got up for church, swing pendent from the verdant
pine-branches. The vast parish-church, of sombre gray masonry, flashing
carnival-fires from the tin-plated pepper-boxes and slopes of its acre
of roof, is receiving or disgorging a variegated multitude of good
Catholics. Within, it is a mass of foliage, a wilderness of shrines, a
cloud-land of incense. Long processions of maidens all in white, and
others of maidens all in pale watchet-blue, are threading the principal
streets. They are not _all_ very religious maidens, I am afraid;
because, as sure as fate, one very young one of those robed in pure
white "made eyes" at me as she passed. Now all this display in Quebec
and its suburbs is set forth on a great scale and with bewildering
turmoil; but if you want to see it in miniature presentment, you must
pass down through St. Roch, and take the road to Lorette. Arrived among
the _sauvages_,--for so the Canadian _habitant_ invariably calls
his Indian brother, who is often as like him as one pea is like
another,--you will there see the little old Huron church decked out in
humble imitation of its younger, but bigger brothers in the city. The
lanes between the log-houses are embowered in a modest way, and the
drapery is eked out by many a yellow flannel petticoat and pair of
scarlet leggings that dally riotously with each other in the breeze. The
shrines are certainly less magnificent than those fairy bowers of
the elf-land St. Roch, but there is a good deal of beaded peltry and
bark-work about them, giving them, in a small way, the character of
aboriginal bazaars. The Hurons are _bons Catholiques_, and everything
connected with the _fete_ is conducted with a solemnity becoming the
character of the Christian red man. So decorous, indeed, are the little
_sauvagesses_ forming the miniature processions, that I do not remember
ever detecting the eyes of any of them wandering and wantoning around,
like those of the naughty little processional in white about whose
conduct I just now complained.

The instinct of the French-Canadian for Indian trading has led one of
that race to establish a general store close by the Huron village,
though on the _habitant_ side of the stream. The gay printed cottons
indispensable to the _belle sauvagesse_ are here to be found, as well as
the blue blankets and the white, of so much account in the wardrobe of
the women as well as of the men. Here, too, are to be had the assorted
beads and silks and worsteds used in the embroidery of moccasons,
epaulettes, and such articles; nor is the quality of the Cognac kept on
hand by Joe for his customers to be characterized as despicable. Indeed,
it would be hazardous to aver that anything is _not_ to be had, for the
proper compensation, in Joe's establishment,--that is, anything
that could possibly be required by the most exacting _sauvage_
or _sauvagesse_, from a strap of sleigh-bells to a red-framed
looking-glass. Out of that store, too, comes a deal of the vivid drapery
displayed upon the _Fete Dieu_, and much of the art-union resource
combined in the attractive cheap lithograph element so edifying to the
connoisseur.

I think it was one of those _fetes_--if not, another bright summer
holiday--that I once saw darkly disturbed in this quiet little hamlet.
Standing upon the table-rock that juts out at the foot of the fall so
as to half-bridge over the lower-most eddy, I saw a small object topple
over the summit of the cascade. It was nothing but a common pail or
stable-bucket, as I perceived, when it glided past, almost within arm's
length of me, and disappeared down the winding gorge. When I went up
again to the road, I saw a crowd of holiday people standing near the
little inn. They were solemn and speechless, and, on approaching, I saw
that they were gazing upon the body of a man, dead and sadly crushed
and mutilated. He was a _caleche_-driver from Quebec, well known to the
small community; and although it does not seem any great height from the
roadway near the inn to the tumbled rocks by the river's edge just
above the fall, yet it was a drop to mash and kill the poor fellow dead
enough, when his foot slipped, as he descended the unsafe path to get
water for his horse. A dweller in great cities--say, for instance, one
who lives within decent distance of such a charming locality as that
called the Five Points in New York--could hardly realize the amount of
awe that an event so trifling as a sudden and violent death will spread
over a primitive village community. This happened in the French division
of the place, which, of course, was decorated to the utmost ability of
the people in honor of the _fete_: and so palpable was the gloom cast
over all by the circumstance, that the bright flannels flaunting from
the _cordons_ stretched across the way seemed to darken into palls, and
the gay red streamers must have appeared to the subdued carnival spirits
as warning crape-knots on the door-handle of death.

I believe it is a maxim with the Italian connoisseur of art, that no
landscape is perfect without one red spot to give value to its varieties
of green. On this principle, let me break the monotony of this little
rural sketch with the one touch of genuine American character that
belonged to it at the time of which I speak. Let William Button be the
one red spot that predominated vastly over the green influences by which
he was surrounded. The little inn at Lorette was then kept by a worthy
host bearing the above-mentioned name, which was dingily lettered out
upon a swinging sign, dingily representing a trotting horse,--emblem
as dear to the slow Canadian as to the fast American mind. William
Button--known as Billy Button to hosts of familiar friends--was, I
think, a Kentuckian by birth; a fact which might honestly account for
his having come by the loss of an eye through some operation by which
marks of violence had been left upon the surrounding tracts of his
rugged countenance. He was a short, thick-set man, with bow-legs like
those of a bull-terrier, and walked with a heavy lurch in his gait.
William's head was of immense size in proportion to his stature. Indeed,
that important joint of his person must have been a division by about
two of what artists term heroic proportions, or eight heads to a
height,--a standard by which Button was barred from being a hero, for
his head could hardly have been much less than a fourth of his entire
length. The expression of his face was remarkably typical of American
humor and shrewdness, an effect much aided by the chronic wink afforded
by his closed eye. How Button found his way to this remote spot would
have been a puzzle to any person unfamiliar with American character. How
he managed to live among and deal with and very considerably master a
community speaking no language with which he was acquainted was more
unaccountable still. The inn could not have been a very profitable
speculation, in itself; but there was one room in it fitted out with a
display of Indian manufactures,--some of the articles reposing in
glass cases to protect them from hands and dust, others arranged with
negligent regularity upon the walls. Out of these the landlord made a
good penny, as he charged an extensive percentage upon the original
cost,--that is, to strangers; but if you were in Button's confidence,
then was there no better fellow to intrust with a negotiation for a
pair of snow-shoes, or moose-horns, or anything else in that line
of business. In the winter season he was a great instigator of
moose- and caribou-expeditions to the districts where these animals
abound, assembling for this purpose the best Indian hunters to be found
in the neighborhood, and accompanying the party himself. Out of the spoils
of these expeditions he sometimes made a handsome profit: a good pair of
moose-horns, for instance, used to fetch from six to ten dollars; and
there is always a demand for the venison in the Quebec market. The skins
were manufactured into moccason-leather by Indian adepts whom Button had
in his pay, and who worked for a very low rate of remuneration,--quite
disproportioned, indeed, to the fancy prices always paid by strangers
for the articles turned out by their hands.

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