“This is my own, my native land!”4
But look! see those cloud-mountains away in the south-west horizons. Heaped on each other in soft, white masses, golden and rose in the shadows, they are beautiful indeed, but certain ominous dark vapors stealing upward from their base warn us that perhaps a thunderstorm may be near, and that we’d better leave our sunny hill if we don’t want a wetting, though we must admit that wettings are rare in Saskatchewan where weeks of fine weather at a stretch are enjoyed.
But although the prairies surrounding it are so lovely, Prince Albert’s greatest beauty consists in the magnificent river that rolls its blue tides, freighted with the mysteries of former ages, past its poplar-fringed banks, with the busy little town on the one side, and the unbroken forests of the northland on the other. Passing over the great importance of the Saskatchewan for navigation, we must take a glimpse at the natural beauty of this river on whose forest-clad banks the tribes of the red men have, in bygone centuries, hunted the buffalo and deer, fought their battles and passed to their happy hunting grounds undisturbed by the intrusion of a stranger race.
In beauty and variety of scenery the Saskatchewan, with its soft Indian name,5 is second to no river in Canada. Springing from the eternal glaciers of the Rockies, its waters, ever cold from their icy birth, and gifted,6 so saith the legend, with magic power, sweep through Alberta and Saskatchewan, –
“A full fed river winding swift
By herds upon an endless plain” –7
until the shores of Lake Winnipeg are reached.
Beautiful at all times the river is – at night, when the stars are mirrored brokenly on its dark surface, like shattered flakes of light, and the roar of its current sounds distinct in the silence; or at morning, when the flushed light of eastern skies creeps over its silvery blue and the rosy mists fade from its waters; or at noon, when every ripple dances in the sunlight till it is a river of sparkling gold with clearer depths beneath its banks, and, afar up, the islands that gem it are hazy with pale blue mists. But it is beneath the sunset skies that it is most beautiful of all. The rush of the day is past, and in the dewy hush of evening, a soft stillness steals over all. The fire and orange of the western skies is reflected on the still waters, shading off into fairy tintings of blue and rose, silver and pearl, while transparent shadows chase each other swiftly over the bright expanse.
A sudden curve in the river shuts off the western glory, and here the waters are deep and clear and dark, with golden and brown undershadows, and crystalline depths along the banks where the breeze ripple of the mid stream does not disturb its perfect rest.8
But paler and paler grow the sunset dyes, deeper and deeper the purple glooms of twilight, more and more indistinct the swaying outlines of the distant woods. And now the golden glow has vanished, the river is a sheet of silver, broken here and there, into a whirl of gray shadows, the air is clear and sweet, the sky dusky and tender with a few early stars in its opal depths and the gleaming scimitar of a thin young moon in the south-west, and, on the opposite shore, the poplars sway eerily in the gathering gloom – all so weird and mysterious that one half expects to see a dusky warrior, clad in all his ancient panoply of war-paint and feathers, spring from their shadows, and ring his war-whoop over the waters of the river his forefathers once claimed as their own.
But the warrior never does appear. Don’t think he will. He belongs to an extinct species now. Before I reached the banks of the Saskatchewan I had only very dim, vague, misty opinions concerning Indians, and the perusal of The Last of the Mohicans9 and similar works had led me to half expect that I would here meet the heroes of their pages in real life. Would they, I wondered, be clad in all the historic garb of their ancestors – moccasins, deer-skin leggings, blanket, war-paint and feathers, together with the indispensable accessories of tomahawk and scalping-knife? And would they, like Cooper’s braves, talk mysteriously of “palefaces” and “setting suns” and “many moons” and “happy hunting grounds,” and look with disdainful hatred upon the usurping white man? Alas for my illusions! They were soon destroyed.
Doubtless, in past ages, arrayed in the before-mentioned costume, and stalking under the boughs of his native forest, the “noble red man” was a very romantic and fear-inspiring object; but as we look at the poor Indian now, clad in ragged garments fashioned after those of his conqueror, with a dirty blanket flung over his shoulder, as he shuffles through the busy streets of another race, glancing upward with cowed submission in his dark eyes, or engaged in chopping wood and other menial tasks for the white man, the last atom of romance vanishes, leaving only pity and compassion behind. But, even decayed as they are, the Indians are interesting still, and considerable amusement may be extracted from a study of their speech and habits. A fondness for exceedingly gay attire characterizes the Indian ladies (please, oh scornful masculine readers, do not exclaim that it is a failing common to the whole sex, white or red) and the dresses of the dusky belles would make Joseph’s coat dull and shabby by contrast.10 Many of the young squaws are comely – before age and hard work have coarsened the graceful litheness of their figures and roughened the round outlines of their features, while in their soft eyes, dark as shadowed lakes, they possess a beauty unowned by any paleface maiden.
The squaws are great talkers (I suppose the men will grow sarcastic here again) and it is a pleasure to listen to their soft musical language as they laugh and chatter among themselves. They are industrious too – far more so than their worse halves (here’s a chance for the ladies to indulge in a spice of irony now) in whose appearance and habits there is little to excite interest.
In a few decades at most the red Indians will become extinct, and the dusky children of a race, whose origin and history are shrouded in impenetrable mystery, will have forever vanished from the land over whose plains and rivers they once held supreme control. As we thus glance over this beautiful district – a province doubtless, in the not very distant future11 – we feel that it is indeed a country to be proud of, and a country well worth waiting and working for. It is a country where prosperity and freedom are awaiting thousands, a country where all may be happy and equal, a country where
“A man is a man
If he’s willing to toil
And the humblest may gather
The fruit of the soil”:12
and a country fit to breed a race of heroes physically and intellectually for, in the crisp, invigorating air of its wind swept prairies, and in the earnest toil that will be so abundantly rewarded, there is little to encourage sickly sentimentality or brainless indolence. Hurrah for Saskatchewan!
“God save our Queen and Heaven bless
The Maple Leaf forever.”13
Prince Albert, June 12th, 1891.14
(1891)
From Prince Albert to P.E. Island
A year after fifteen-year-old Maud Montgomery travelled west by train to be reunited with her estranged father, Hugh John Montgomery, who had remarried and settled in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, she came reluctantly to the conclusion that staying there indefinitely would not be in her best interests. Disillusioned by the toxic dynamic between her and her stepmother and disappointed by the haphazard schooling available to her, Montgomery returned to her grandparents in Cavendish, departing on 27 August 1891. This sketch, evidently written at the suggestion of one of her grandfathers and published in the Charlottetown Daily Patriot in October 1891,1 provides a lively account of her journey home. According to Mary Henley Rubio, the decision for sixteen-year-old Montgomery to travel by train and boat all the way to Ottawa without a chaperone “was an extraordinary breach of custom and propriety,” not to mention “downright unsafe.” Also omitted from this published account is the fact that no family member went to meet her when she arrived in Prince Edward Island.2
WE LEAVE PRINCE ALBERT EARLY ONE FRESH AUGUST morning, just as the new born sunshine creeps over the prairies to kiss the dew from the grasses and coquette with the waters of the blue Saskatchewan. There is th
e usual bustle at the railway station, the good-byes, promises, reminders, the fluttering of handkerchiefs and the kissing of finger tips;3 then the train glides slowly out, and as the last straggler on the platform vanishes, we realize that we are really off and “homeward bound!”
Quickly, familiar landmarks disappear, and soon we are flying over the virgin prairie, no trace of civilization in sight, – save where now and then we pass a little log cabin surrounded by nodding wheat fields of dead gold. The long grasses and prairie blue-bells are still damp with dew, and the shadows are black and long under the tall white-skinned poplars and straggling willows. Now and then we pass through ragged groves of pine and fir, looking dead and dismal with the gray streamers of moss clinging to their black branches, or speed by a little blue lake, rippling on its grassy shores.
We have plenty of time for inspecting the scenery! The train does not go very fast! It is so occupied with slowing up every few minutes, because of cows on the track, that it cannot, and our only amusement is to stick our heads out the car windows and watch said cows running, wondering meanwhile if we look as funny ourselves as do the other people whose heads are also out.
By noon we are at Saskatoon,4 and the rest of the way there are no blue lakes, shivering poplars, yellow wheat fields, or herds of lazy cows, – in fact, there is no ANYTHING!5 A more desolate expanse could not well be imagined. Far, far, far, as the weary eye can reach, is one exasperating level, covered with grass the hot sun has scorched to a dusty brown. Here and there are bare black tracts that prairie fires have swept, and off to our left winds a river valley, whose banks, broken into round dark hills, are inexpressibly dreary. Scenery there is none, unless occasional piles of buffalo bones can be called so; neither is there any sign of life, save, once or twice, a troop of prowling jackals, and a solitary fox who tries to race with the train, but gives it up in despair! And we count the telegraph posts and the bone piles, and watch the clouds and speculate as to the possibility of the ghosts of buffalo ever revisiting their old trails that are still visible; and finally we turn round in disgust and go to sleep.
We are at length awakened by a hurrying and scurrying, shouting and banging doors, flashes of light and a general confusion from which our bewildered senses gather that we have arrived at our day’s destination. We climb off in the chilly dark, and find ourselves in the surging jostling crowd at the Regina station.6 Regina is not remarkable for beauty. The surrounding country is bare and level and the city itself is a dusty-looking place. But to do it justice, it is plucky and goaheaditive7 and bound sooner or later to be one of the busiest and most populous of the cities that are swiftly growing up all over the bright western prairies.
It is half past eleven at night when we leave Regina. The Pullmans, they tell us, are full,8 so we have to go in the first-class. To our dismay we find it is literally packed. In nearly every seat are two and sometimes three. Some few fortunate mortals have secured seats all to themselves, and selfishly refuse to allow any one else to disturb their naps, so we have to squeeze down into a seat with two others and bear it as philosophically as possible. Sleeping is out of the question. We take cat naps now and then, yawn, fidget, and study our fellow travellers. Anything funnier than a first class car at midnight we have never seen. If we were not feeling so sleepy and unamiable we could almost laugh. Here are some of those previously-mentioned selfish individuals stretched out on their seats in various stages of dishabille9 and limpness snoring as peacefully as if on the downiest couches. There are those who are wide awake and generally glum. One man in particular growls and squirms and wonders why on earth people crowd the car so, and is so generally disagreeable that everybody is glad when he leaves.
Oh, what a long long night it is! How slowly the minutes creep away. And the train flies on, on, on, till we feel as if it never would stop, over the dark prairies. But at last far over the level, where the greens and the blues meet, we see a faint stain of orange that grows deeper and brighter, before we know it the day is born and we are on the prairies of Manitoba. On, on we speed – now by the ripe Manitoban wheat fields and snug farmhouses, now by some pretty little village and often through tracts yet free from man’s dominion, where the luxuriant grasses are green and long, and the ranks of the prairie sunflowers dance and nod their impertinent yellow heads in the wandering breezes.
Rat Portage is quite a city10 and Virden is a rapidly growing little town.11 Brandon is a charming spot and presents quite a handsome appearance,12 but we only see enough to wish for more, for our train, in common with its kind, has a detestable trick of starting just as we become interested in something. We have been watching a stout lady laden with innumerable parcels coming rapidly down the wet street. She has reached a muddy crossing where she suddenly slips, throws up her arms and is just in the act of falling when the train glides past and we are forever left in tantalizing ignorance as to the fate of the stout lady and her parcels.
As we approach Winnipeg the general subject of conversation changes. Previously it has been the boodling transactions recently exposed at the capital.13 Some have moodily declared that the result will be utter ruin, confusion and general anarchy, while others have confidently assured that all these “little fusses” will blow over without serious harm to anyone. Now, however, every one discusses the recent frosts, and opinions are as varied as before. Some say the crops are ruined, others that they are unhurt. In both cases the truth seems to be between each of these extremes. We are not long in Winnipeg – just an hour! Only time to take a peep at some of the principal streets and conclude that Winnipeg is a busy, thriving city, as handsome as it is energetic.
Then we are off again, and as twilight shadows creep over us we see that the country we are in now is very different from that which we have crossed. It is rugged and hilly. Big boulders and scrubby growths of spruce and fir are seen at intervals. We are approaching the forest wilds of Northern Ontario.
It has grown raw and cold. The sun sets amid gray cloud-fringes with a cruel savage sort of splendor, and the wind that comes moaningly over the waste14 brings with it a promise of rainy days. A promise that is fulfilled, for when we take a goodnight look into the dismal night, we see nothing but a gloomy forest, with dark, sorrowful spruces looming out of the mist-like phantom trees, while afar off a line of weird firs, “like tall thin priests of storm,”15 are outlined against the last streak of dying gold.
Morning again! and a grey, dismal morning, with rain streaming down in slanting lines over the wet, shaking trees, and splashing on the still, dark surface of the woodland streams we cross; and the train goes rocking and swaying on through the hills that rise around us, until, just as we are beginning to imagine that we must be nearing the confines of the world, lo! we pop down on a little oasis of civilization hidden away among the mountain – Fort William at last!16
We scowl considerably on finding that we have to wait here a day for the boat; but grumbling does no good, and is productive of wrinkles besides, so we go to an hotel, and then sally out in the pouring rain to “do” Fort William. That operation does not take long. Charred stumps, wandering pigs and streets that run off into the woods are the principal sights. We say all we can, honestly, in praise of it – it is active and hardy and a “rising town,” but there we stop. It is undeniably rough and ugly, and not even the limitless forests and tree-clad mountains, sheathed in gray vapor, can redeem it.
Next day, even when the sun is bright and the blue hazes wrap the rugged slopes, it is but little better, and we confess that we are heartily glad to shake the dust of Fort William from our feet, and board our boat – the palace steamer Manitoba.17
Then we steam slowly down the river of the unpronounceable name,18 and find ourselves fairly out on the blue waters of Lake Superior. Slowly the forest slopes recede and the myriad islets become scarce until we are at last out of sight of land on that great inland sea. It is a charming day. The delightful breeze barely ripples the dancing, sunlit waters and the glorious Canadian skies a
re blue and tender. The beautiful boat is alive with mirth and gaiety. Everyone is in good spirits. If there are any unfortunate victims of seasickness they keep in their staterooms and nothing disturbs the general merriment. The promenade deck is the favorite resort of all – ourselves included – for here we find the best opportunities for noting the amusing characteristics of our unsuspecting fellow travellers. There are all sorts of people on the boat. The stout, elderly lady with a fondness for knitting and theological discussions, the abstracted man of business with his columns of figures, the ubiquitous spoiled small boy who tyrannizes over all the other children on board, the anxious mother of five small babies who keep her in a perpetual worry over their wanderings, the talkative Yankee who considers everything American “superb” and everything Canadian “despisable,” the cynical individual with spectacles and Darwinian views – we think he really must have descended from a monkey, – the lady who hopes we will have “one real awful storm just to see what it is like you know,” the timid little woman who is so afraid there will be a collision or explosion, the creature who waylays everybody, even our ignorant selves, to discuss politics, the honeymooners who “promenade” ceaselessly and run into everybody so absorbed are they, and the literary fiend19 who prowls around, forever scribbling in an ominous black note-book. Sunset on Lake Superior! Who can describe it? The steady tramp tramp goes on around us, for in the cool evening, the deck is thronged, but we lean over the railing and watch the changing loveliness with awed rapture – the greens and blues and crimsons mingling in the translucent waters and the high hills – for we are again in sight of land – lying darkly against the golden skies. How appropriate to the scene are Scott’s lines. Surely here is a lake that
“In all her length far-winding lay
Of promontory, creek and bay,
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