A cutter rowed out to us, and the Customs men came aboard. As soon as they had the captain's word we carried no infectious disease, the passengers were allowed ashore in a flit boat that was already waiting alongside. When I stepped ashore I was shocked to find the solid ground all tossing and heaving so I could barely stand. I was feart I'd never walk straight again. There were jostling crowds about me, and huge piles of fresh timber, and ox-carts clattering over a cobbled street on iron wheels. The nearest shop was a chandler's; the tarry smell took me straight back to my uncle's warehouse in Maryport. My gorge rose at the stench that rose from the town. It could have been Whitehaven – it was just another port, after all – and yet it was utterly unlike Whitehaven. For the first time in my life I was standing on foreign soil, and I was no longer sure of anything. At least the land was blessedly warm; a heat seemed to rise from the very cobbles to greet me. I shouldered my knapsack and walked dizzily along a street between houses of whitewashed stone.
I came to a square where they were packing up after the day's market. The cobbles were sticky with squashed vegetables and dung, and the last stallholders were loading their leavings into carts. There were two-storey stone houses on three sides, and on the fourth a steeple house with a white spire and wide open doors with people streaming in and out. A signboard on a smart new building opposite, also with open doors and a crowd of motley patrons, proclaimed the Neptune Inn. I felt little reaching hands about my waist; I pushed away a cluster of begging children, but they clung and whined. I cried ‘No!’ and tried to shove them away, and backed into a chair-mender's stall, where I tripped over a rocking chair. The fellow swore incomprehensibly – but his meaning was plain enough – and shook his fist in my face. The children's hands were over me like mice, searching for the pockets a plain coat does not possess. The glare and the smell and the heat battered against my aching head, and the solid ground seemed to heave worse than ever. The Neptune was not my sort of lodging, but any sanctuary was better than none. I pushed myself free, and stepped within.
The taproom was noisy, fall of sailors and merchants, and to my horror I understood not a word that any man said. It was like a bad dream, the Tower of Babel come true, and what was worse, my simple request made no sense to the tapster when I spoke to him. I'd been prepared for strange experiences, but not for this. But thanks be to God, the landlord, when he came, spoke English, though his accent was unlike anything I had ever heard before. The long and the short of it was, I got a clean room with a dormer window that looked out on Place Royale, so I could look down on the covered market stalls and the surging crowd. All day long the place echoed with the cries of the costers, and the rumbling of wheels on the cobbles, and in the evening the Popish chanting from the steeple house was only drowned out by lewd songs and wild carousings in the tap below us. I shared my small room with a silversmith from Bristol, who hoped to find work in Montreal. He was a little quiet fellow, like an under-nourished sparrow, and if I had to have a bedfellow, at least he was clean and sober. It was terribly hot at night, for the roof was metal: there was an ordinance in the town, following several fires, that neither walls nor roofs might be of wood. I believe I was much overcharged for my shot at the inn,5 but had not the words to argue.
My fellow lodger explained to me that the reason I could not make myself understood was that many people in Quebec city spoke in the French tongue. I should have guessed, I suppose, but my education had dealt little with wars between man and man. My knowledge of what they call the great affairs of the world was sketchy: I'd thought the French had been defeated and driven out of North America long before I was born. It is, of course, contrary to the principles of our Society to align ourselves with any worldly power, but for all that, I am an Englishman born, which is, as I perceive it, the greatest blessing that God can bestow upon a mortal man. Moreover, in all my life I'd heard naught but ill of the French, and indeed, in the day or two in which I wandered the steep streets of Quebec city, I could no more take my eyes off these French people, especially the women and the bairns – I had not somehow thought of them as having women and bairns – than if I had been taken straight into the wilderness and been confronted by so many wolves or bears. Of course I had not then met Loic; how could I know that on his island . . . but I run ahead of myself.
The rock of Quebec is surmounted by a fort; there are batteries on all sides bristling with cannon, and even the civil streets are full of redcoats. I was told that the fortifications, which were much in need of repair, were first made by the French to keep out the wild Indians, and latterly the English, and would perhaps be needed now against the Americans, for the border was only a few leagues to the south of us. But it grieved me to see how it was, even in the wilderness. For where, if not here, might the holy Kingdom of Peace yet be manifested upon this war-torn Earth?
I was astonished that much of Quebec city was given over to the Catholic religion, filled with steeple houses and much chiming of bells, and men in long robes and shrouded women parading the streets so it was like walking into a Raree show. Apart from that I liked the town well enough.6 I kept wondering what Rachel had made of it; I think the colour and bustle must have pleased her very well. It was built on two levels, and the morning after I arrived I climbed to the upper town, through the city gate, and walked past the fort on to the bare hill. I skirted the precipice above the river, and watched a great raft of tree trunks floating downstream, and on it little figures of men moving about. It passed me by, and I wandered on. There were crickets chirping in the grass, not like our English grasshoppers, but in a massed chorus all around me. At first I wondered what the constant sound could be. When I hear a grasshopper now, it draws me back to North America, where the crickets sing from dawn to dusk all summer long. It was good to smell the earth again; good to have solid ground under my feet. I walked towards a round tower ahead, and when I came up to it I saw it was still a-building, with workmen mixing mortar and pushing wooden barrows up the ramp. I realised what it was. I'd read about these Martello Towers in the Gentleman's Magazine at the Royal Oak. Their rock-solid construction had been much discussed – in the press, I mean, not among Friends – as a marvel of modern engineering, but I never thought to see any so far from England. An old soldier in a shabby red coat, with a folded telescope tucked under his arm was watching the builders, and – for he was an Englishman – we got to talking.
‘War?’ he repeated, in answer to my question. ‘Of course there'll be war. He pointed south into the blue distance across the river. ‘You know what lies down there, young sir? The United States of America! They don't love us and we don't love them. They like putting stars on their flag – Jonathan Yankee doesn't like being outdone, not even by the Milky Way – and I reckon they're hoping the next star's got our name on it. Quebec. Oh, ay, they'd like Quebec. Where the hell d'you come from, anyway, if you don't know that?’
‘England.’
‘Bless you, boy, England's been at war these twenty years!’
‘Ay, but with France.’ I tried to express some of the confusion that I felt. ‘But I didn't realise . . . now I'm here . . . Canada is French. Only . . . there are redcoats, just like at home . . . and this tower’ – I gestured at the builders in front of us – ‘this is a British fort, isn't it?’
‘Bless you, boy, where have you been? This ground you're standing on . . . these are the very Plains of Abraham!’
I looked blank.
‘For the Lord's sake, where have you been all your life? This is where Wolfe won Canada, when your papa – who damn well ought to have taught you better – was in shortcoats, I make no doubt. You stand on British soil, and should be proud of it!’ He looked across the river, muttering, ‘Don't they teach them anything these days?’
‘But so many people here are French!‘7
’I'm not French. You're not French.’
‘No.’ At least that was certain.
’Canada's not French,’ he finished, as if that were somehow a logical concl
usion, and to emphasise the point he tapped me on the chest with his telescope.
‘No,’ I said more doubtfully, while I gazed across the river into the blue haze to the south of us.
The old fellow told me the river was very busy these days, for now that all the ports of Europe were closed to Britain – including the Baltic ports, since Buonaparte set up the blockade in ‘06 – trade had thriven as never before. The Old Country was desperate for timber, and if Canada had naught else it had trees, thousands of miles of them, stretching away into lands no man had ever seen. As he spoke we watched another of the great log rafts go floating by. ‘You'll see plenty more, young fellow, before you get to Montreal.’
I was grateful to the old fellow, for he first put it into my head that I must learn a few phrases in the French tongue, and he took it upon himself to give me my first lesson, up there on the Plains of Abraham, while we watched the boats go by down below on the river.
Next day, when I found the vessel that was to take me to Montreal, I laughed out loud with sheer excitement. For the Accommodation was one of the new steamships. When I saw what kind of craft she was, I fairly ran to buy my ticket. I had to wait for a French Madame with a quiverful of bairns who was ahead of me in the queue. For all I knew they were saying the ship was full. My turn came; ‘Un ticket, monsieur, s'il vous plaît. (Alan taught me later that in plain speech I must say s'il te plaît but he said he wouldn't be held answerable for the consequences. At the time I speak of I thought it was all one word: sivooplay.) The ticket was advertised at nine dollars, and cost me three guineas. They only take twenty passengers but I was in the Lord's hand that day, and there was a place for me.
As we cast off there came a great toot on the whistle, and a burst of steam from the funnel, as if all the fires of hell were down below a-stoking. Then all at once there was a clank-clank-clank that shook the deck, and when I looked back to the quay there was already a strip of water widening fast. It can be a rough ride up the St Lawrence between Quebec city and Montreal, but all the newness had not yet rubbed off the Accommodation. She had neither masts nor sails, but two great paddle wheels amidships. I asked the mate if I could see the wheels from inside, down below, and for a douceur he took me down and left me with the engineer. It smelt of woodsmoke in the hold, but it was light enough to see the great engine, and the piston rods going round, all with a great clackety noise, just as loud as the Atlantic wind in the rigging of the Jane, only this noise had purpose in it, the kind of rhythm that matches a man's pulse instead of terrifying him out of his wits.8
The passage upriver is about sixty hours, including the nights spent at anchor. I said to my new friend the engineer, ‘But this is a miracle.’ He grinned at me and said, ‘You could say so. Neither wind nor tide can stop her!’
I stood on deck and watched the land go by, close to on one bank, a line as faint as the Scotch hills across the Solway on the other. There was no salt in the air; while I was in Quebec city the painful cracks around my fingernails had all but healed. The first evening aboard we had a thunderstorm. I stayed on deck, sheltering from the torrents of rain in the lee of the cabin wall, while the thunder rolled across the sky and forks of lightning rent the sky like the visible wrath of God. Between the thunderclaps I heard the pistons turning below and the scoosh of the water through the paddle wheels, as if we were caught up in the very chariot of Elisha. In the whiteness of the lightnings I saw a far range of mountains to the north. It was a night fall of a wildness that stirred my blood. Rachel would have revelled in it.
The next day, by contrast, I saw a pleasant tended land, with the neat French farms coming right down to the water. Between the farms there were forests and waterfalls, and once a wooded island with towering cliffs, but among the farms these manifestations of the wilderness seemed not so much awful as picturesque. Once a small boat came out to bring fruit and vegetables for the captain's table, these being plentiful in the harvest season. The habitants seemed sturdy fellows, though not so hearty as the yeomen of Cumberland. I thought if Rachel's lot had fallen among settlements like these, I could have wished her happy. I sat on deck in the sunshine and read the little packet of letters over again. We had not heard from Rachel herself since she wrote from Yonge Street in Second Month of the year ‘09. A small aftershock of the rage I'd felt at sea shook me; why did she not write? Why had I bothered to follow her, when she had naught to say to me? The world the letter belonged to seemed to be separated from me by a great chasm. I knew the thrice-crossed words almost by heart – I had had great trouble in deciphering them, especially in the latter part – and they told me nothing:
Yonge Street, Upper Canada
3rd day of Third Month, 1809
To my dear Father and Mother, and to Mark, my brother,
I think of ye, and pray that all is well. At first I looked not back, being overwhelmed by new experiences, and thinking always of our Concern and Ministry for our Friends in North America. It is almost a full year since I left. John Gill sent on thy dear letters from Philadelphia, and a travelling Friend hath brought them to us here. I was so happy to hear from thee, my dear Mother, and I thank Father and Mark for their messages. I write now because our Friend David Willson is going down to York tomorrow, and will carry this to the Post Office for me.
I told thee in my last how Judith ministered in the Meeting in New York, and how we had a Leading that we should visit the Meetings on the western frontier. So we returned to Baltimore Meeting, which has a Particular Concern to the Indian tribes in the west, where the settlers are yet sparse and the wilderness untamed. It is a wicked thing here in America that too often the Indians are treated like Wild Animals, to be harried and killed, by those who know not that the Light Within shines within every man, even the naked savage, who, through no fault of his, hath never heard the name of God.
In the end we went not to the Meeting at the Wabash River. The Friends dissuaded Judith, saying there was a sudden tumult among the Indians. Word came of a new Prophet among them, who incites them against the settlers, even our Friends. So instead of going by way of the Ohio valley we travelled rather to the north, under the care of Philadelphia Meeting, visiting Meetings as we went. We crossed some mountains called the Alleghenies. The going was very rough, and the journey took upwards of two weeks. The snow was still melting, and the rivers were very swollen at the fords. As we rode – for Philadelphia Friends gave us two sturdy cobs for ourselves, and a man called Daniel to be our escort – we passed wagons with whole families in them, and all their goods, sometimes chickens in a coop, and kettles and axes hanging from the wooden frames. When all were camped at night we sometimes took our opportunity with them, and found them mostly simple godly folk. It's a rough road; I would not like to commit myself wholly to it as these folk have to do. Many Friends have taken this way, for there is much good land in the west for those that have none at home.
About this time we actually met our first real Indians (Iroquois in these parts), but had no opportunity with them. There are not many left in New York, though I believe all this country was once theirs, before the settlers came. The smallpox has decimated their numbers (quite literally, the Friends told us), and many of the survivors have gone away into the far west. Those who remain are much addicted to spirituous liquors, and this has caused a sad degeneration among them. At last we came to a great Lake called Erie, from whence we went downriver to a new Meeting at a place called Niagara. We stayed at Asa Schooley's in Upper Canada (for we crossed the river which is the border with British territory: in these wild places the border between one Temporal State and Another is of no consequence). There is a great Force on the river; our Friends took us to a place where we might gain the best Prospect. Thee would like it well, Mark. If thee can imagine the Falls at Lodore magnified an hundred times, nay five times an hundred, thee has perhaps an inkling of it.
We heard at Niagara that there are several new Meetings established in the Wilderness of Upper Canada. The winters are very bad, and
there hath been much hunger and privation among Friends in these remote settlements. When Judith heard this, her heart was wrung for the poor Friends, alone and starving in the great Wilderness. So it was that we visited Meetings at Pelham and Black Creek, and then crossed the Lake called Ontario from Niagara to York, which is the capital city of Upper Canada. We had a rough crossing in a schooner. Judith staid below all the way – I told thee how it was with her in the ship from Whitehaven to Baltimore – but I was up on deck as long as they would let me. I find the white-capped waves, and the sound of the wind in the rigging, to be very exhilarating. If I had been the lad I would have gone to sea, I think: maybe in our own Ship from Maryport. Thee never knows. But then I would not be here in Yonge Street, at the very last outpost in the whole of Upper Canada, and I suppose this is adventure enough, to be doing the Lord's work in the wilderness.
And now I was wanting to describe to thee the settlement here, and the Meeting, and our good Friends who have been our hosts this winter, but it is almost nine o'clock, when David Willson is to come by to fetch my letter. So – I write in haste – I must just tell thee that we have had an opportunity with the Indians who dwell in the forest hereabouts, and they have asked Judith to cross the Lake called Huron to a place they call the Island of the Spirits, where many of them dwell, that we should minister to them there. So when the ice melts, we shall take ship from [the word looks like Pent Anguish – surely not?] . . . But that will be David Willson at the door, and I must not keep him.
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