since the world began), and then (we suppose, because the propelling force is somehow exhausted) in a perpendicular straight line? Strange as it may seem, this is introduced with some pomp, as a new illustration of the doctrine of projectiles, derived from observing the movement of water in cataracts !

The account of the Azores, with which this work commences, contains absolutely nothing worthy of a moment's attention. That these islands abound in healthy situations, and have romantic outlines, when viewed from the sea, (and what islands do not?)-that they have various pleasant spots, or, as our author calls them, places of amenity,'-that some of them abound in hot springs and sulphureous exhalations,-that their mountains are high and uncultivated—their valleys low and fertile ;-these, and similar statements, are sufficiently known to all readers. The only point in the First Chapter that looks novel, is entitled, Influence produced on the mind by positions of extraordinary elevation,' we have already extracted, and set before our readers under the head of the Sublime. The passage from the Azores to Newfoundland, furnishes accidentally a remark of some importance on the temperature of the Gulph stream. It is from fifteen to twenty degrees warmer than the water on each side of it, as high as the banks of Newfoundland. Our readers will notice here a singular confirmation of Mr (now Sir William) Strick land's curious and important observations on the navigation of the Atlantic and Gulph stream, analyzed with much deserved admiration in a former Number. At Newfoundland, we are presented with a long description of the Eskimaux; and begin the description of Canada with an account of the Gulph of St Lawrence; the banks and islands of which do not afford any object of sufficient interest to detain us, except the tribe of natives who inhabit the country bordering on Lake St John, and are commonly called Mountaineers. They are descended from the Algonquins; but are altogether strangers to the ferocity which characterizes that and many other Indian tribes. On the contrary, they are exceedingly mild and gentle in their dispositions; never use any offensive weapons, except in hunting their prey; nor are known to injure any human being whatever. Even intoxication produces not in them any of the violent excesses to which it leads in other rude tribes; and their whole demeanour is remarkable for decency and good order. They are about thirteen hundred in number; one half Christians, the rest still Pagans. In their propensity to indolence, and aversion to every species of regular industry, they resemble all other savages. No efforts of persuasion, no temptations of gain, have been able to make them cultivate their fertile lands, even to the extent of planting a few- po

04

*

tatoes

tatoes, or stalks of Indian corn, although they are very fond of these articles of food, and greedily devour them when rubbed over with any kind of grease. They differ from other savages not more in their gentleness than in their cowardice. The appearance of an enemy in the smallest numbers, drives those pusillanimous creatures away in a panic to the woods; and they never think of defending themselves but by flight. So unnatural a character, we should think, could not exist among savages. Indeed, the tribe in question must speedily be extirpated, if they were not surrounded by the police of a civilized nation.

The description of Quebec is in no respect striking or lively; and what the letter-press wants, the plates are far from supplying. Indeed, we never remember to have seen such confused, indistinct, and unsatisfactory scrapings, as those which adorn the work now before us. Mr Heriot himself has evidently drawn his sketches very well; but the engraver has been forced to scrape them into utter confusion, in order to suit the prevailing rage for cheap and bad prints of this kind. We defy any pair of eyes to discover, that the view of Quebec from Beaufort, facing page 62, is any city at all, unless they are directed to the writing below. It may be a cloud,' or like a camel,' or black like a weasel,' or very like a whale.' So far these views resemble all such prints; but we think they confound confusion' somewhat worse than any others we have seen.

In the account of Quebec, however, we have met with some things which alarm us excedingly; and we hasten to communicate them to our countrymen, hopeful that, the alarm being given, a speedy remedy will be administered by the wisdom of this enlightened and Protestant nation. It seems, that there is not only an established Catholic church in Canada, powerful and flourishing, but that there have recently been tolerated, in that unhappy colony, some of the more damnable abominations of Antichrist, from which the very Papists themselves had cleansed the European church long ago. Will it be credited in this pious country, that the establishment of the Jesuits was protected and encouraged by the British Government, for years after it had been put down in Europe ;-that those vile Papists were allowed, openly in the face of day, to teach the ingenuous youth of Canada, and to receive pupils, who flocked thither from the West Indies ;-to nurse them up in the superstitions of Popery ;-to disseminate, by their means, the horrors of that faith ?-Nay, that the order only ceases to be known there at this day, and to be encouraged by our gracious Sovereign, because, not being persecuted, it died a natural death some years ago? But even at this hour, though the Jesuits are no more, there is an extensive seminary establish

ed

ed by law for the propagation of Popery, and richly endowed with a fair proportion of the produce of the country to support it in this horrible work. We must give this awful picture in our author's own words. The subject is too momentous to be passed lightly over; and we must strengthen, by the authority of a Protestant eyewitness, statements which in our own language might not be credited.

The feminary, a building of fome extent, forming three fides of a fquare open towards the north-weft, contains a variety of apartments, fuited for the accommodation of a certain number' of ecclefiaftics, and of young ftudents, who are of the Roman Catholic religion. This inftitution owes its foundation to M. de Petré, who, in 1663, obtained from the King of France, letters patent for that purpose. Tythes were enjoined to be paid by the inhabitants, to the directors of the feminary, for its fupport; and a thirteenth in addition to what was already the right of the church, was levied. This regulation being found too oppreflive, was altered to a twenty-fixth part of the produce, to be paid in grain, from which tax newly cleared lands were exempted for a space of five years.

The members of the feminary are compofed of a fuperior, three directors, and fix or feven mafters, who are appointed to inftruct young men in the different branches of education profeffed by each. Since the decline and extinction of the order of Jefuits, the feminary, which was at first exclufively defigned for the education of priefts, and, excepting the college of Montreal, is the only public establishment of the kind in the province, is now open to all young men of the Catholic faith, although they may not be deftined for the facerdotal function. The north-eaft afpect of this building is agreeable in fummer, having under it a spacious garden, which extends to near the precipice on the caft, and overlooks the lower town.' p. 68, 69.

It would be a painful task to go through all the details of the other branches of this established Roman Catholic church,-to tell of its monasteries and its nunneries, its hospitals and chapels, its various foundations for similar superstitious purposes. Scarce a step can be taken, it should seem, in the whole town of Quebec, without seeing some monument of Popery, some veiled nun or barefooted friar, some procession of penitents, some church or convent decked out in the trappings of the scarlet monster; and all this supported by law, recognized by the constitution of the realm, paid for by the industry of the people, nay, of the very protestant people themselves! We ask, are these things known. to exist, and if they are, why are they tolerated? Where is that edifying zeal which broke forth last year, and saved at once the government from pernicious reforms, and the church from unprecedented dangers? Shall such things be in the colony of a Protestant country, under the reign of a religious monarch?

Shall

Shall the spot where our Wolf fell in fighting against the Catholic powers of Europe, be polluted by the rites of Popery? Where is the watchfulness of our ministry, where the eloquence of our common-council men? Are Lord Hawkesbury and Deputy Birch dumb, that they cannot speak? Are Oxford and Cambridge no more, that they cannot address? and what has become of all the Scottish Boroughs? We do trust that the zeal and wisdom of a religious Parliament will speedily be exerted to put down such unheard of abominations, and that while they consume the midnight oil in keeping the Irish Catholics under, they will cast a thought towards unhappy Canada, where far greater dangers are lowering. We devoutly hope, that whilst thousands of men are poured into the sister island, to check the rising liberties of our Catholic bondmen, a force will be spared sufficiently powerful te root out every seed of popery in Canada; and that the same government which nobly prefers losing Ireland to abating one jot of its dominion over the consciences of its inhabitants, will, in justice and consistency, wish that the colonies may perish, rather than the Protestant interest should be touched!

Let us turn from the contemplation of this painful subject, to the natural beauties of Canada, the attempt to describe which occupies so large a portion of the work before us. We shall present our readers with the account of some scenery near the fall of La Puce, rather for the sake of introducing that fall to their notice, as it seems to be one of the most beautiful in the country, than because our author's account is a very lively sketch of it.

On turning his eyes towards the country he has already paffed, the traveller is gratified by a luxuriant and diverfified affemblage of objects, which, like a chart, feems to expand itfelf beneath. After defcending a hill clothed with trees, and of about feven hundred feet in perpendicular elevation, we gained the fide of the river which flows through this fettlement, and of which we have already spoken. There are no lefs than feven falls of this river, which are near to each other, and are form. ed in its current from the fummit, to the bafis of a steep and lofty mountain, after having held its courfe for a distance of feveral miles, along a ridge of high lands. The ftream does not exceed forty yards in width, and the principal and lower fall, which is on the north-east, is one hundred and thirty feet high. It has formerly flowed through another channel, in which it has been obftructed by fallen rocks, and also partly by a dam or dyke, which the induftry and fagacity of the beaver teach it to form, frequently acrofs the channels of rivers. The ancient bed is plainly discoverable, by the deep ravines, worn, at different ftages, on the fide of the mountain, and by a valley near the lower fall.

Although, in almoft the whole of the cataracts in Lower Canada, a certain fimiliarity of effect is discoverable, the precipices over which they pour their waters being nearly perpendicular; and although thefe blime objects fo frequently occur, that the impreffion which novelty

produces

produces on the mind, is thereby in a great degree weakened, yet each is distinguishable by peculiar features. The accumulated waters in the fpring of the year, by abrading and fweeping down portions of the folid rock, inceffantly produce alterations, and thus enlarge the channel, or render it more deep.

The landscape which environs this fall, is grand and romantic. The banks are rugged, fteep, and wild, being covered with a variety of trees. Below, large and irregular maffes of limeftone rock, are piled upon each other. Not one half of the mountain can be seen by the fpectator, when ftationed by the fide of the river. The whole of the waters of the fall, are not immediately received into the bafin beneath, but a hollow rock, about fifteen feet high, receives a part, which glides from thence, in the form of a fection of a fphere. The river, throughout the remainder of its courfe, is folitary, wild, and broken, and prefents other fcenes worthy of obfervation. ' p. 91, 92.

It is rather from the views of the fall of La Puce, than from the description, that we are led to form a pretty accurate notion of its singular beauty, and so conclude that it is in some particulars unique among cataracts. The general effect of the view is that of a vast green bank, rising from the ground, and reaching upwards till it is lost in the clouds; only interrupted, about one third from its base, by a large sheet of white foam, perpetually flowing, the eye cannot discover whither or from whence, but thrown as it were into the middle of the greater sheet of green leaves, This is the description of the fall of La Puce, as we take it from the plate facing page 90, almost the only one of our author's engravings which is capable of conveying a tolerably distinct impression to the reader.

We shall not detain our readers with any account of the celebrated falls of Niagara, both because they have been much better described in many other places, and because one fall is so like another, that we are fearful of being tedious, if we do not limit our extracts, on a subject after all not extremely interesting. The only other cataract, therefore, which we shall stop to notice, is that of Montmorenci, (formed by the St Laurence,) next to Niagara, probably the greatest in the world, and never before accurately described. The following passage, contains whatever is most worthy of attention in Mr Heriot's account of it.

On each fide, the bank is almoft perpendicular, is nearly fifty feet in altitude and is covered at the fummit with trees. The fouth-weft bank rifes beyond the fteps; in looking downwards it appears alfo wooded, and terminates in a precipice. The bank on the oppofite fide, affumes a regularity of fhape, fo fingular, as to refemble the ruins of a lofty wall. Somewhat below, the banks on each fide are clothed with trees, which, together with the effect produced by the foaming currents, and the fcattered maffes of ftone, compofe a fcene, wild and picturefque.

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