Jean Rivard - University of British Columbia

then again, it is pitiful to consider, that no
amount of ignorance will mitigate the mischief
wrought by detraction and misrepresentation,
and no history can be too absurd
to gain credence among the vulgar. And,
astonishing is it, that not merely the illiterate
peasant, whose ideas have never travelled
beyond his native parish, but the man
of learning, the statesman, and most
pitiable of all—the Minister of the
Crown—the dictator of nearly fifty
colonies—too frequently takes as standard
authority the fictitious trash that is found
in the literature of tourists.
The author of the fabulous stories that
form the staple commodity retailed as
Canadian history, is the homogeneous
creature known by the apt cognomen of a
Traveller. He travels on and on, without
either acquiring wisdom himself or communicating
it to others. He is one of the
positive nuisances that we have to complain
of, and in order that foreigners may know
him and know us, it were well that he were
pointed out. He comes here in his "travels,"
and he serves us—we will not say worse
than he serves others, but in such a way, as
affords us large room for complaint. Did he
confine his researches and adventures to
himself, his travels, if not profitable, would
at least be harmless; but in this lies the mischief:
the merest youth that ever escaped
from the parental domicile, has no sooner
caught a glimpse of foreign scenes than he
must forthwith inflict a Book on the community.
And a heavy infliction it is, verily—one
solid jumble, in ninety-nine of
every hundred cases, of exaggeration and
lies. How can it be otherwise? Our modern
traveller or tourist's knowledge—such
select portions of it as he prints—is not
even derived from personal observation. It
is never gleaned from things which he has
seen or on which he has studied or
reflected. In most cases the pith of his wonderful
narrative is to be found in some
antiquated volume descriptive of men and
things half a century gone by. And to give
the grandfather tale a modern air, this valuable
guide to the history of the country is
interspersed at certain intervals with some
wayside gossip—the extravaganzas of a
loafing acquaintance.
Place beside the fabulous adventures of
our Traveller, the plain, indisputable facts
and figures in which Lillie or Smith have
ably and triumphantly shown the progress,
the capabilities and the prospects of our
infant country—shew these productions to
the wise men of the East, and with ready
discernment they will pronounce the statements
of the latter prejudiced, improbable,
and unworthy of credence; while the former—the
production of some literary sprig
of their Modern Athens—is veritable,
naked truth. And in plain fact, it is evident,
that as far as public opinion is or will be
regulated by the high literature of British
Magazines, we bid fair to be holden as a
starvation-stricken race—the denizens of
an outlawed region parallel in climate and
material enjoyments to the penal colonies
of the Russian Czar.
This is no exaggeration. Hear Blackwood
in March, 1852, discoursing of the
"Canadian Wilderness." But let us premise
(lest we heap unmerited opprobrium on
the "Traveller") that Blackwood's Novel—
for it is simply a novel—a most mischievous
one, moreover—is founded on the published
experience of a disappointed settler—an
ape of aristocracy, too poor to lie on a sofa
and too proud to labour for a living. The
unutterable hardships of the Canadian
Settler are thus introduced to the commiseration
of the fair ones of England: —
"Ladies of Britain, deftly embroidering in
carpeted saloon, gracefully bending over
easel or harp, pressing with nimble finger
your piano's ivory, or joyously tripping in
Cellerian circles, suspend for a moment
your silken pursuits, and look forth into
the desert (mark that) at a sister's sufferings.
. . . The comforts of an English home,
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