BOOKS.
EOM'S TRAVELS IN CANADA.•
A raw era in the history of Canada will date its beginning from the visit of the Prince of Wales and the opening of the Victoria Bridge—the one a pledge and token of the mutual goodwill that knits the colony to the mother country ; the other an event which has removed "the greatest, perhaps the only obstacle to the pro- gress of Canada," by insuring to it the development of its almost
boundless resources, through a system of internal and interna- tional communication, which is independent of the change of seasons. Under these circumstances, Mrs. Sinnett has judi- ciously selected the present work for translation from those in which the well-known author has described his extensive travels in North America. The chroniclers of the Prince's visit have shown us the Canadians in their gala-day aspect ; Mr. Kohl ob- served them in their every-day habits, and we have in his book "the testimony of an impartial observer, that the freedom en- joyed by the inhabitants of Canada is practically much more un- restricted than that of their neighbours ; that their taxation is lighter ; that their independence and liberty of self-government are scarcely, if at all, less ; and that no less ample provision is made for education, that first necessity of social life." He testi- fies also that in the whole province there are no more stedfast adherents to the English connexion than those very French habi- tants who rose in open rebellion against it in 1837 and 1838. They cordially acknowledge the wise and generous use which the British Government made of its victory on that occasion, and say of it, what no vanquished people ever said before, " Quoique noun aliens battns, aa nous a fait du bien." Not a trace of national or politic antipathy to England remains in their minds, for having no real grievances against her, they are not such adepts as the Irish and the Ionians at inventing imaginary ones. True, there exists among their young men a small party of " Rouges " or ultra-Republicans, but the mass of the French Canadians is essentially conservative, and wishes as far as possible to maintain the status quo. A union with their Republican neighbours pos- sesses for them no political allurements, and would in other re- spects be exceedingly distasteful to them ; for though they are be- ginning gradually to make up their leeway in matters of social progress, they do not like to be hurried along at the fiery pace of their go-ahead neighbours on the South. A French Canadian M.P. said to Mr. Kohl, "I heard once of an American, who, when he was travelling through our country and observing the anti- quated ways of our French peasants, observed that if they, the Americans, got the country into their hands, they would soon improve the old-fashioned French off the face of the earth—and this is just what our people dread—they think, and I believe rightly that a union with the Republic would bring on the rapid decline of their-language, their customs, and their nationality, which would melt away and disappear before those of the Ameri- cans, as formerly those of the aborigines of the country did before theirs."
English engineers built the colossal Victoria Bridge, but in al- most every other instance the pioneers of civilization in Canada have been, and still are, Yankees. Wherever there is a settle- ment to be made in the wilderness, or a town, a canal, a road to be constructed, they are always the first on the spot, and their aid is indispensable, for they know how to bring together the necessary capital, the men, the cattle, and whatever else may be needed, with the least possible loss of time.
"It must not be inferred, however, that because in Canada, as in their own country, the Yankees are the pioneers of civilization, that they in general outdo the Upper Canadians ; on tiae contrary, they are often sur- passed by them, if not in activity, at least in the solidity of their under- takings. Upper Canada is a still younger country than the two nearest American States, Pennsylvania and NewYork, and it was naturally at first very dependent in many respects on these elder communities. Even ten or twelve years ago it was so, but now things are greatly altered. To mention only one instance out of many ; goods in Tosonto and other Canadian ports were mostly insured in the United States, but within a few years such re- spectable offices of this kind have been established here, that they obtain insurances not only in Canada itself, but along the whole line of the Mis- sissippi, even down to New Orleans, and these young Canadian firms have such good credit that even the Americans now come to insure with them. It is perhaps the consideration of this and some similar facts, that has led Canada to form the expectations that have sometimes been expressed to me. There is no doubt,' they say, 4 that oar interests are becoming daily more and more closely connected with those of the United States, but if the Ame- ricans think on that account that an annexation of our country to theirs will some day take place, we draw quite a contrary inference. Canada will, we believe some day be united with the neighbouring States; things are daily tending that way, but the Americans will not get us ; we shall get them, and in the separation of the Northern from the Southern States of the Union, the former will become united with our great empire on the St. Lawrence.'"
" Lord ! gie us a gude conceit o' oursels," was the prayer of the covenanting minister, when his flock pleaded that it was not for any slackness in the cause, but because they thought humbly of their own military prowess, that they quailed before Claverhouse's dragoons. It is evident that the Anglo-Canadians enjoy a bountiful share of that gift of Heaven which the Covenanters lacked. May they never have less of it! for though modesty is a comely virtue, i it s not so conducive to success in "the struggle for existence" as a good stock of the opposite quality. The progress made by their province of late years gives them a fair excuse for bouncing a
• Travels in Canada. and through the States of New York and Pennsylvania. By J. G. Kohl, Author of " Russia sod the Russians," " Austria," Stc. Trans- lated by Mrs. Percy Sinnett ; Revised by the Author. :In two volumes. rul.- lished by Mar.waring• 1 little, for it has been such as to-outdrip all sober calculation. In the forty years from 1811 to 1851, the population of Upper Canada increased 1200 per cent, namely, from '77,000 to 909,000. Its assessable property in 1829 was estimated at 2,500000r. ; in 1854, it was nearly fifty millions sterling, exclusive of the publio lands, " and all this property had been created by the sheer in- dm& of the inhabitants, without assistance from great oa italists." The rand Trunk Railway has now opened up the whore country to immigrants from Europe, and put both provinces in direct com- mercial relations with all the States of the American Union from the Atlantic to the valley of the Mississippi. A report published in the present year states that important commercial firms in Chi- cago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and other great Western entrep6ts, were beginning to avail themselves of the new route. The rail- way company are also punctually fulfilling a contract entered into with the Hudson's Bay Company to deliver the whole of their stores destined for the Red River settlement in twenty-eight days from Liverpool to St. Paul's, Minnesota.
Mr. Kohl was surprised to find how little his own countrymen contributed to swell the population of Canada. There are only 15,000 Germans settled in the country, though at least an equal number of them pass through it every year. The reason why they so resolutely refuse to tarry in a land of freedom, plenty, i and contentment, s deeply significant of the present state of Ger- many, and of the troubles that await it in no distant future. "No," they say, "we did not come to America to be again the
subjects of a crown. We have had enough of princes in our own country, and we left Europe to become free Republican citizens." The Irish immigrants act with less consistency. In i spite of their hatred of the Saxon oppressor, many of them remain n Canada in voluntary subjection to the British Crown. Both there, anti in the United States, they are found to make good citizens in the second generation, but "there wanders no foreigner in America, who is so universally repudiated" as the original Paddy. One common testimony is borne against him by men of every race and every creed, from the banks of the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. Talk within those wide limits to whom you will, White man, Indian, or Negro, on the subject of nation- ality, and he will tell you that of all the nations he knows there is only one he can't stand, and that's the Irish. Having re- peatedly made this experiment, and always with the same result, Mr. Kohl says, "I began to understand the growth and strength of that powerful opponent to Irish Catholicism, the Know- Nothing party, which numbers - in its ranks English, Scotch, French, and Germans." It may seem strange that the French should share the feelings of this party ; but in Canada they aro a remarkably inoffensive people, and the turbulence of the Irish causes them extreme disgust. Apropos of this Hibernian pro- pensity, our author tells a little story. Ile was travelling in a. Canadian stage, with two other passengers who assailed him with the usual battery of questions respecting his personal history. When he had answered them all, one of the interrogators took him in hand upon the subject of his country. " 'You say you are a German? '—' Yes.'—' fell me, have you got an Established Church in Germany ? '—'No.'—' Have you both .Protestants and Catholics ? '—'2oth.'—' Have you most Protestants or Catholics ? '— ' I think the two parties must be pretty equally balanced.'—' How many are there on each side ? '—' I think perhaps sixteen or seventeen millions.'
" 'Seventeen millions! By Jesus, there would be a famous battle if they were going to fight one another.' " 'Yes,' said the other, 'and what a profitable job it would be to furnish the shillelahs.'
" So without my asking any questians, I saw that I had by ma a genuine
eon of Erin, and a regular Yankee. Only an Irish fancy would so instantly have boded forth a fight as the consequence of having seventeen millions of Protestants and Catholics 'on each side;' and only Yankee associations would have suggested immediately hew to make a profit out of it."
Before we part with our author, we must make room for one or two of his observations in natural history. Salmon ascend as high as Lake Ontario, and it is aremarkable instance of hereditary instinct that, although they are found in all the other bays and rivers that open into the lake, they never enter the largest of them, the Niagara. Yet they might swim-ten or twelve miles up the river very comfortably, before the whirl and rush of the water began to be felt ; but "they do not go making fruitless efforts to pass the Great Falls with a leap as they do the small ones ; their procession passes by the mouth of the Niagara without looking in, as if they knew all about it, and were well aware it was no thoroughfare. Their ancestors must certainly have tried the pas- sage, and having broken their heads in the enterprise, redorded their experience for the benefit of posterity." Migratory birds are guided by a similar instinct in their choice of mountain passes, those of the Alps for instance, which they at once distinguish from impervious gorges.
The disappearance of the American wild plants before European weeds, just as the Aborigines disappear before the immigrants, was made known to Mr. Kohl in a conversation at Quebec, in which some of the most distinguished naturalists in America took part.
"Wherever the Europeans come, they say, there immediately springs up a European vegetation which takes root energetically, and drives out that native to the country. In many cases, of course, this admits of explanation, as when Europeans sow various kinds of corn from the old world, it is very conceivable that they may also sow the seeds of many weeds; but sometimes there does really appear something almost mysterious in the process. When, for example, Europeans pass only once through the forest or district pre- viously peopled only by Indians, and make their bivouac Are, and their night quarters there, the place is thenceforward marked by the springing- up of European wild plants. Railroads have been carried across regions hitherto untrodden ; and along the line sprouted forth, not American, but new European weeds. ' The Indians,' said my esteemed informant, 'have long made the same remark, and have given to a weed commonly appearing under such circumstances, (the English Plantain, or Plantago Major,) the name of 'The Whiteman's Footstep.'"
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