Immigration and the Hudson's Bay Route. 555 



rising and falling ; pent up in a wretched steerage, suffering from 

 sea-sickness, and suffocating from poisoned air, without a single 

 incident or object to relieve the dull, dreary, insufferable monotony. 

 At length after the endurance of the privations and sufferings of an 

 ordinary life-time in the space of a few days ; after growing weak 

 from sickness ; after becoming emaciated from the impurities of the 

 over-crowded vessel-home ; after the courage and the energy and 

 the hope have been driven out of the poor unfortunate immigrant, 

 he is landed at Quebec, or Halifax, or Montreal, and along with a 

 thousand others, equally hopeless, and perhaps still more discouraged, 

 he or she is given over to the ordeal of a two thousand-mile journey 

 in the immigrants' car. His head is still swimming, and the ground 

 seems to rise and fall under his feet like the swell of the ocean, and 

 the motion of the car seems not unlike the rolling of the ship. 



The desponding home hunter counts over his remaining half 

 sovereigns, or scans his insufficient bill of exchange, takes stock of 

 his hand baggage, looks out of the car windows, and braces himself 

 up in an attempt to revive his sinking energies. He has heard of 

 Canada, and its waving golden harvest fields, but is not accurate in 

 his geography. The sun is rising out of the eastern horison, and 

 there are streaks of beauty along the eastern sky over-arching the 

 land that he has left far, far behind, and painfully reminding him 

 that, even to the immigrant whose scanty habitation was scarcely 

 lovable, that, after all "there is no place like home." Turning from 

 the thoughts that can but add to his despair he looks westward, 

 hoping and doubting, and begins to " scan the landscape o'er." 

 There are rugged hill-sides, and stunted trees, and stagnant pools, 

 and wretched looking shanties, and now and then half-fed cattle 

 grazing upon the sterile fields ; there are grand views of the mighty 

 river, on the one hand, but the inspiration from these is frozen in 

 half an instant by the inhospitality of the prospect on the other ; 

 there are chiriping but lonely -looking birds, and in season, there are 

 croaking frogs, but there are no heart-gladdening harvest fields ; 

 there are narrow strips of partly cultivated soil, badly fenced with 

 logs or poles, zigzagged, and partly fallen down ; there are log houses 

 and frame houses, and sickly gardens, and dilapidated barn-yards, 



