A NEW ZEALANDER ABROAD.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CVI, Issue 12696, 30 December 1901, Page 3

A NEW ZEALANDER ABROAD.

JOURNEYINGS IN CANADA.

QUEER OLD QUEBEC.

It is <a fa.r cry from Sydney to Quebec — a far cry in every way. lam not thinking so much of distance in space—though that is considerable —but 'of distance in thought and life. There could. hardly be a greater contrast than these two cities. One is new. It has the flush and flavour of modernity in all its looks and ways. The other is old. It belongs to a far-off time. It is true the waves of progress are beating about its walk and gaining ant entrance here and there. But on the whole it keeps its face steadily towards the past, and I .is well.contented, to do so. Quebec in this respect is unique among all the cities of the great American Continent. It was one of America's most brilliant sons who wrote of it: " Queer Old Quebec! of all the cities on the continent of America the quaintest. Here is a small bit of medieval Europe perched upon a rock, and dried for keeping —a curiosity that has not its equal on this side of the ocean. We rode about as if we were in a picture book, 'turning over a new leaf at each street."

On board my steamer I noticed among the sailors a very old man. Stiff-crooked " his lyart hafflins thin and grey," lie seemed to he an interesting as well as pathetic figure. I said to him one morning, as he was trying to keep the 'hurricane deck clear of the flurrying snow: " You are a very old man to be at sea." "Yes, sir, but what is there to do on land?" Perhaps he may have fancied thait I was imagining ai man of his years should have remained there 4o prepare for lis latter end, and may have been ready to meet me with the moral of a story which a gentleman, told) me a little later. An aged captain wasi about to sail with his ship. A lady friend, concerned about his welfare, said to him, "Are you not afraid to go, to sea again—an. r old man like -ou? You know your father died at sea, and your grandfather 'died' at sea. Are you not afraid of dying there too?" "Madam," replied the old salt, " you know your mother died in bed, and your grandmother died in bed. Are you hot afraid of dying there too?" But my point is not what I said to the old man, but the interest he had for me. There were a hundred other sailors on board —young, hardy, vigorous men—'but I felt no particular desire to 'talk with them. This old man, however, amid these gay and lusty comrades, had a peculiar fascination. It is the same with Quebec. Here it stands in this new, vast, modern America, with the snows of age upon it. It refuses to be hustled) along by the tide of progress. It is content for the most part to. dream its life away in. the oldfashioned methods. It is a surprise to come upon such a relic of antiquity 'here in a continent where everything breathes of newness and the twentieth, century. My steamer waited here two days, and I had time to explore and muse. And now I have time to write the result, if anybody cares to read.

Max O'Rell, epeaicing the other day of happiness, referred to the pleasures of thought and imagination. He said he. sometimes followed a little splint of wood floating down the water in a street • channel. What a vast world was there for reflection. The laws of motion, of fluids. The tree from which that splinter came and how it came, the history of its growth, the record Avhich -it kept of the years and days that had passed over, etc. There is really an endless source of knowledge and wonder and mystery in such ai simple thing as that splinter of "wood' eddying down the street channel. And Max O'Rell's remark reminds me of a little parable with a similar moral I once saw somewhere. "A child brought me a pebble, round and smooth. ' What a beautiful thing,' be said. Said I, ' There are millions and millions of- pebbles like that.' . Said, he, 'Then there are millions and millions of beautiful things.'" That, no doubt, is so. The simplest things about us are instinct with wonder and mystery. But in a town like Quebec any house and hill—even the very dust beneath our feet—is steeped in far-reaching memories and stored residues of passion.

One of the things that struck me about Sydney was the absence of militarism. I only remember seeing one qaimon —a useless old' piece of iron—in one of the parks. The grim war-god had donned the dress of commerce, and seemed diverted to the arts of peace. But here in Quebec it is all different. Mars holds every site. Tommy Atkins is in evidence in all the streets, and cannons frown at you from countless forts and bastions. In a, sense, on© might suspect that, for Quebec has been what Belgium is to Europe—the cockpit of this western continent. it is four centuries since the brothers Cabot left Bristol in their little craft and crossed the, Atlantic _ Sea. I have been thinking how easy We do it today in our floating palaces, compared with these venturesome spirits of old. The Cabots just missed Quebec, but they discovered Newfoundland (Britain's oldest colony) and Labrador. France was to have the honour of discovering Canada, She obtained it forty years later,., when Jacques Cartier sailed up the St Lawrence. But it was another noble spirit, and as true as he was noble—Champkin—who was to lay the foundation of Quebec. This he did two hundred and' ninety-three years ago. He found there the forest primaeval; he found also the Indians, "tall, straight, coppercoloured fellows, who never smiled. They were always grave and dignified, except when excited by the thought of fighting and killing people. Then they were like, fiends." The Indians were mighty hunters; could put an arrow through a deer at a, hundred yards. They had furs in great quantities. France wanted furs; so trade A company was formed; then colonists came. They mingled with the Indians, spread away down the river to what is now Montreal. Disputes arose, fightings, massacres; but the red man had mW his master. To-day he that once owned' the laud and held-hi? wild, free life, looks down on a new world, with the sense .of doom in his heart. I read in the paper here the other day of a white man who had come down from the forests of Hudson's Bay. He had been living there .twenty-five years ; had never seen a train or a. tram or an electric, light. He was in the service of the' Hudson Bay Company. He had come down to try to induce the Government to plant schools up in that region. Asked why does not the company do something for the natives, "The company?" he said. "Gracious, no. It is furs they are after." That could hardly bs said'of these first French colonists. At any rate, the church followed up its children, and was not unmindful of "the regions beyond." Jesuit missionaries came, planted schools, and carried Christianity into the Indian wilds. They endured extraordinary persecutions ; but they were firm, and triumphed, and their triumph is seen to-day, not only among the Indians but on, the 'hold which. Roman Catholicism has upon the French Canadians.

Your steamer from Montreal lands you at the foot of a. rocky rampart—say, a couple of hundred feet high—from the crown of which Quebec looks out over the grey St Lawrence. Instead of going round this barrier, I 'thought I -would climb up the precipice for a. near cut. But on further consideration I thought, as good people are scarce, I would not. The rock looked treacherous and the shrubs uncertain. It was somewhere up here, however, on an autumn evening, one hundred and forty-two years ago, that a little English army made its perilous ascent. It kid dropped quietly down the river, and the night before its> gallant leader repeated to some friend? Gray's immortal elegy. When he concluded he remarked that he would rather' hav'& 'been the author of that ode than the conqueror of the French to-mor-row. It was a curious prelude to the events of the following da.y. Everyone knows what these were. Beyond the heights of Quebec lies the historic spot known as the Plains of Abraham. Curiously enough, a Scotsman is responsible for this name. One Abraham Martin, long; 'had piloted

the French King down the St Lawrence and become the owner of this piece of land. And here on, the Plains of Abraham waa 'struck the blow .that changed the destiny of the great Canadian Dominion. Everyone is familiar with th* story of that battle and the death of the intrepid leaders on both sides. The fatal bullet that struck down Wolfe let him live long enough to be told that the French were, in flight. "Thank God, I die happy," he answered. While we dwell with our hero in his victory we shall not fail to feel the pathos of his great opponent's death. Mortally wounded during the progress of the fight, Montcalm was told his time would not be long. "So much the better," he replied; " then I shall not live to see the- surrender of Quebec." In death they were not divided, and in the city for which they fought they are crowned to-day with equal honour after life's fitful fever. Montcalm sleeps now in the Ursuline Convent, but Wolfe, far away over the sea, in jjie parish church of Greenwich, where he had played as a little boy. It is ciiripus to reflect how little the significance of events is understood at rLe moment. You walk out to these Plains of 'Abraham, or take the electric car, which carries you along the St Louis street. It is a noble street, lined with trees, and gay with palatial residences. One wonders what Louis XIII. said to his Minister Richelieu, when the latter told him that he had ordered a crooked path through the forest primeval in Quebec to be called after him. This " crocked path " is now the St Louis Street of which we speak, and in ' and around which have been transacted such pregnant events. Louis and his great, adviser had more prescience, probably, than their successors. " You know that the nations," wrote France's great literary man, Voltaire, " are at war for several acres of snow, and are spending in the fight more than the whole of Canada is worth." That was how the issue for which Wolfe fought shaped itself to the mind of 'the philosopher. We need not wonder much, therefore, if the depraved Ministers of the dissolute King, should write to the Ambassador on London : " We „are ready to voluntarily cede Canadai to the English. Much good may it do them." And when che Queen heard that Quebec had actually been taken, she is said to have exclaimed: "At last the King will be able to sleep peacefully." Buckle, the historian, says of the Bourbons :' " They learn nothing, and they, forget nothing." But even the stupidest in France to-day has learnt to regret the immense prize that slipped through its fingers when Canada passed to Britain. Will it so remain? There is little doubt of that, so far as- the English-speaking provinces v are 'concerned. But Quebec? Here is a country as large as France, Italy and Switzerland together, and with more than a million and a. half of a totally different race from the Anglo-Saxon—French in its origin, habits, language, . modes of thought and sympathies. What of it? Will a fusion take place here, as long ago Norman, Cynvri and Saxon merged in Eng* land, and Teuton, Norseman and Celt in Scotland? That is the problem of the future here. There are those who say that such a fusion will not take place—who predict political strife and open conflict some day. The past history, however, does not seem to me to point towards that goal. The genius of the Anglo-Saxon for welding diverse races into at great federation has met and mastered more difficult problems than this. There is no good reason to fear failure in Quebec. 'There is no doubt that the mass of the people are loyal to the British flag. From this French-Canadian stock has come some of Canada's most bi'illiant statesmen and orators. It was French-Canadians who led i» the struggle for responsible government over the confederation of the provinces; while the present distinguished Premier of Canada, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, is a French-Canadian. "s

In the steamer coming across to England (and, by the way, I might say that I came by the Allan line from Montreal, and no one could desire a more comfortable boat to cross the Atlantic in than the s.s. Tunescan), I had the pleasure of conversing frequently with a member of the present Quebec Government—a French-Canadian. I asked him about the loyalty of his compatriots. He had no doubt of it. Of course, he says, there is a small section, mainly belonging to the more ignorant classes, ' which is an uncertain, quantity; and there are also a few irresponsible newspaper editors, who write occasionally in a reprehensible strain. But the great mass of the people recognise that they are better off under English rule than any other This was the opinion of a well-informed and thoughtful, member of the Quebec Government.

Let the future hold what it will, however, the present French Canadian! is an interesting and picturesque study. I spent a considerable time down in the old market place of Quebec. Here congregate the farmers and their wives in hundreds to dispose of their farm produce. One has opportunity here to see the simple lives and primitive fashions of these rural people. The men wear grey homespun clothing, with a fur overcoat, and fur caps or capuchin; the women sit in their covered vehicles bickering with purchasers of their goods. And what a motley collection of these latter! Plucked fowls, eggs, fruit, flowers, vegetables of all kinds, from garlic to goodness knows what. It is French that is spoken here—not modern French, but the French of a century ago, or something like it, so averse are the people to change. It is curious to come on a layer of civilisation in this modern world that takes vou back to medieval times. These French Canadians are simple, home-loving people, farming in the old ways, loving fun and festivity, rearing large families, and little concerned about the wonderful, mental and mechanical advances of the age. _ They are intensely religious, and I go into their places of worship here on a working day. and find at all hours little groups of men and women at their devotions. On Sundays and holydays the churches are crowded. The French Canadian is not advanced enough yet to lose faith in eternal verities. Perhaps it might be better if these people were more progressive—had better .methods of farming, and worked their machinery more than they worked their souls. But I aril not sure that those who do this are any happier. That great writer who has put life into the mysteries of the Celt—Fiona Macleod—tells in one of her books of the legends and dreams of the ancient Celt, of his beliefs in the supernatural, the sort of men and women that such faith created long ago; and then she says: " A short while ago I was on the hillside above one of the "much-frequented lochs in F/astern Argyll. A crowd of 'Glasgow Fair' excursionists had landed from the steamer, degraded in. aspect, in. mien, in language. I thought of the islanders, so blythe on occasions, yet so temperate in all things, so dignified in speech, so simple, so courteous, and my heart sank. In this maelstrom of the. cities the old race perishes, drowns." It is possible, then, these simple French Canadians get more and better things out of life than we modern Titons, burdened with the urgency of the world. In these days of industrial struggle we are always in danger of forgetting that we are in life in order to live. Cineas asked Pyrrhus what he would do when he had conquered Italy. "I will conquer Sicily." "And then?" "Then I will conquer Africa." "And after you have conquered the world?" "Then I will take my ease and be merry." "And why," said Cineas, "can you not take your ease and be merry now?" If-we moderns acted more in the spirit of this, we might not be so advanced 1 , but we should certainly be a happier people.