Zigzag Journeys in Northern Lands, Hezekiah Butterworth [best short novels .txt] 📗

NIAGARA FALLS.

“It is the New York Rhine,” said Mr. Beal, smiling. “The river St. Lawrence is, by right of analogy, the American Rhine, and so deserves to be called.”

“Which is the larger river?” asked Charlie.

“The larger?”

“Yes, the longer?”

“It does not seem possible that an American schoolboy could seriously ask such a question! I am sometimes astonished, however, at the ignorance that older people of intelligence show in regard to our river of which all Americans should be proud.

“Ours is the Greater Rhine. The German Rhine is less than a thousand miles long; our Rhine is nearly twenty-five hundred miles long: the German Rhine can at almost any point be easily spanned with bridges; our Rhine defies bridges, except in its narrowest boundaries. The great inland seas of Superior, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Erie require a width of miles for their pathway to the ocean. The Rhine falls cannot be compared with Niagara, nor the scattered islands of the old river with the Lake of a Thousand Islands of the new. Quebec is as beautiful as Coblentz, and Montreal is in its situation one of the loveliest cities of the world.

“The tributaries of the old Rhine are small; those of the new are almost as large as the old Rhine itself,—the gloomy Saguenay, and the sparkling Ottawa.

“Think of its lakes! Lake Ladoga, the largest lake in Europe, contains only 6,330 square miles. Lake Superior has 32,000 square miles, and Michigan 22,000 square miles.

“You will soon have a view of the mountain scenery of the lower St. Lawrence. The pine-covered walls along which trail the clouds of the sky are almost continuous to Montreal.”

“But why,” asked Charlie Leland, “is the German Rhine so famous, and ours so little celebrated?”

“The German Rhine gathers around it the history of two thousand years; ours, two hundred years. What will our Rhine be two thousand years from to-day?”

He added:—

“I look upon New England as one of the best products of civilization thus far. But there is rising a new New England in the West, a vast empire in the States of the Northwest and in Canada, to which New England is as a province,—an empire that in one hundred years will lead the thought, the invention, and the statesmanship of the world. Every prairie schooner that goes that way is like a sail of the ‘Mayflower.’

“In yonder steerage are a thousand emigrants. The easy-going, purse-proud cabin passengers do not know it; they do not visit them or give much thought to them: but there are the men and women whose children will one day sway the empire that will wear the crown of the world.

“The castles are fading from view on the hills of the old Rhine; towns and cities are leaping into life on the new. The procession of cities, like a triumphal march, will go on, on, on. The Canadian Empire will probably one day lock hands with the imperial States of the Northwest; Mexico, perhaps, will join the Confederacy, and Western America will doubtless vie with Eastern Russia in power, in progress, and in the glories of the achievements of the arts and sciences. Our Rhine has the future: let the old Rhine have the past.”

The Class approached Quebec at night. The scene was beautiful: like a city glimmering against the sky, the lights of the lower town, of the upper town, and of the Castle standing on the heights, shone brightly against the hills; and the firing of guns and the striking of bells were echoed from the opposite hills of the calm and majestic river.

The Class spent a day at Quebec, chiefly on the Terrace,—one of the most beautiful promenades in the world. From the Terrace the boys saw the making up of the emigrant trains on the opposite side of the river, where the steamer had landed, and saw them disappear along the winding river, going to the great province of Ontario, the lone woods of Muskoka, and the far shores of the Georgian Bay.