The Future of Canada
On reaching the summit of this hill, I found myself on the highest land I had yet stood upon in Canada, with the exception of Queenston heights. I stopped the horses and looked around, and on every side, far and near, east, west, north, and south, it was all forest—a boundless sea of forest, within whose leafy recesses lay hidden as infinite variety of life and movement as within the depths of the ocean; and it reposed in the noontide so still and so vast! Here the bright sunshine rested on it in floods of golden light; there cloud-shadows sped over its bosom, just like the effects I remember to have seen on the Atlantic; and here and there rose wreaths of white smoke from the new clearings which, collected into little silver clouds, and hung suspended in the quiet air.
I gazed and meditated till, by a process like that of the Arabian sorcerer of old, the present fell like a film from my eyes: the future was before me, with its towns and cities, fields of waving grain, green lawns and villas, and churches, and temples—turret-crowned: and meadows tracked by the frequent foot-path; and railroads, with trains of rich merchandise steaming along:—for all this will be! Will be? It is already in the sight of Him who hath ordained it, and for whom there is no past nor future: though I cannot behold it with my bodily vision, even now it is.
But is that NOW better than this present NOW? When these forests, with all their solemn depth of shade and multitudinous life have fallen beneath the axe—when the wolf, and bear, and deer are driven from their native coverts, and all this infinitude of animal and vegetable being has made way for restless, erring, suffering humanity, will it then be better? Better—I know not; but surely it will be well, and right in His eyes who has ordained that thus the course of things shall run. Those who see nothing in civilised life but its complicated cares, mistakes, vanities, and miseries, may doubt this—or despair. For myself, I am of those who believe and hope; who behold in progressive civilisation, progressive happiness, progressive approximation to nature and to nature’s God; for are we not in His hands?—and all that He does is good.
Contemplations such as these were in my mind as we descended the Hill of Bears, and proceeded through a beautiful plain, sometimes richly wooded, sometimes opening into clearings and cultivated farms, on which were usually compact farm-houses, each flanked by a barn three times as large as the house, till we came on to a place called Five Stakes, where I found two or three tidy cottages, and procured some bread and milk. The road here was no longer so good, and we travelled slowly and with difficulty for some miles. About five o’clock we reached St. Thomas, one of the prettiest places I had yet seen. Here I found two or three inns, and at one of them, styled the “Mansion House Hotel,” I ordered tea for myself and good entertainment for my young driver and his horses, and then walked out.