Initially the sole bishop in Lower Canada was attached to the cathredral in Quebec City. The bishop for the Rawdon Settlement, Rev. George Jehosophat Mountain described one of his ventures into the settlements.
August 25.—I had no duties at Sorel, the Confirmation having been held there in my journey of last winter, and I rose at four o’clock to prepare for crossing in the ferry-steamer to Berthier, on the north shore of the St. Lawrence, where Mr. Anderson breakfasted with me; and, having taken leave of him, proceeded, directly back from the water, to the township of Kildare, about twenty-nine miles from Sorel, which is an appendage to the mission of Hawdown. There is a beautiful spot on this road, at a ferry, where you cross a considerable river, deeply sunk between very high and wooded hills; but the scene, like many others, has suffered, within my recollection, by the fire and the axe.
CONFIRMATION AT KILDARE.
I was received at Kildare, where the Rev. Mr. Rollit came over to meet me, by an Irish family of the name of Dickson, of which there are several ramifications in the neighbourhood—persons interested in the cause of religion, and ready to make exertions and sacrifices in support of the Church; in fact, but for them there would have been no church in Kildare. The building is sufficiently finished to be used; and I held afternoon service, and preached to from seventy to eighty persons: eight were confirmed. I also, by particular desire, baptized a child belonging to the family just mentioned.
CONFIRMATION AT RAWDON.
August 26.—Mr. Rollit drove me, after breakfast, about nine miles, to his parsonage, in the township of Rawdon; and we were followed by two of the Messrs. Dickson, in other vehicles, bringing my servant and baggage. In the afternoon, divine service was held in the church, where the number of persons present approached two hundred, and thirty-eight were confirmed, making forty-six in this mission, of which Mr. Rollit took charge in May, having previously held the appointment of travelling missionary, under the auspices of the Diocesan Church Society for the District of Quebec. He has a larger mission now, and many appointments of duty for week days, besides serving the two churches on Sunday; but for this labour, being equal to it, he is all the happier, and it is a relief to him, as a man with a family, to have a settled home.
CONFIRMATION AT NEW GLASGOW.
August 27.—We rose at five, and after an early breakfast, set out, in the first instance, for New Glasgow, in the extensive mission of Mascouche, in the different parts of which I had left it to the Rev. Mr. Flanagan to distribute my services, according to his discretion, my circuit for the summer closing there. Mr. Rollit and the elder Mr. Dickson still came on with me; and Mr. Constable, a leading member of Mr. R.’s congregation, accompanied us in another vehicle. At St. Lin we stopped to bait our horses, and found some refreshment provided for ourselves at the house of the miller who has charge of the seigneurial mill at this place, belonging to the Hon. Mr. Pangruan, of Mascouche (for we were travelling, if I may so express it, with one foot in the seigneuries, and one in the townships). The English-speaking population of this neighbourhood, who probably do not know much about St. Linus, are a good deal at fault about the name of this place, of which, in their imperfect endeavours to follow the French pronunciation, they make something like Sallah. Mr. Flanagan was waiting for us here; and, after our luncheon, the whole
party came on to New Glasgow, where service was held in the church, and I confirmed six persons: perhaps eighty, or more, were present. Mr. Rollit preached to the congregation. The church has a mean appearance, and does not seem to be well built; but, by degrees, it may assume more and more of some ecclesiastical character, and be otherwise improved.
We had come twenty-five miles before service, and I had about ten more to go, with Mr. Flanagan, to the township of Kilkenny—a township truly in the woods. Tins distance it was necessary to perform on horseback, on account of the nature of a great, portion of the road. A cart, however, fitted for such service, was provided for the baggage. This vehicle, and the horses, were brought over from Kilkenny; and Mr. Irwin, the good settler who was my host in my winter journey of 1843, came with them himself. After the first few miles the road is a mere path through the dense and lofty forest; in some places it is deep and boggy, and here, in a wet season, must be difficult to get through; in others, it is a good deal encumbered with rocks and stones, yet presenting no difficulty by daylight. A considerable portion, however, of the whole length, affords very good riding. It had been calculated that we should arrive late, and men were prepared to meet us in the wood with torches of cedar slips, or birch bark; but as we reached Mr. Invin’s house about half-past seven, this help, which had been put in requisition, was not needed. We partook of the refreshment provided for us, in which everything was very good of its kind; made our arrangements for the duties of the morrow; and, having gathered the Christian family together for evening devotions, we lay down afterwards, with feelings of thankfulness, and happy sense of our communion with them in the faith of Christ, beneath their humble roof.
CONFIRMATION AT KILKENNY.
August 28.—I went at six o’clock to swim in a lake which is about a quarter of a mile from the house, and upon the opposite shore of which I saw the marks of habitations, in an opening made among the woods. All beyond this is continuous and unbroken forest, up to the inhospitable regions of the north, yet destined, in time, to be farther and farther encroached upon by man.
The service was appointed for half-past ten, and the church is a couple of miles from the house, to which we were not to return. We set out on horseback an hour before the time, all the baggage being put into a curt. Within something more than a mile of the church we were obliged to leave the cart; and the bags and portmanteau, containing articles required for the service, were carried by hand. We here entered a narrow horse-path, through a close wood of towering trees. The footing of the horses was difficult, from the quantity of great rough stones in the path. It is rarely travelled, except on foot, and in wet weather a horseman is liable to be drenched by his contact with the branches on either side; but all was now dry, and all was fair. The little wooden church, still unpainted, occupies an isolated situation, upon a little eminence in an opening among the woods, but it is central with reference to the abodes of the worshippers. Here, having tied our horses to the fence, we went in, and met a congregation of ninety persons, or upwards. Twenty-three were confirmed.
CLAIMS OF THE KILKENNY CONGREGATION.
This congregation of Irish Church people in the heart of the woods have a strong and special claim upon the care of the Church—a claim of which, in the person of her ministers, she has assuredly not been unmindful; for all the missionaries in succession, who have held charges
within any reach of them, have, with much labour and toil, paid them visits at such intervals as it was practicable to fix. Latterly they have had service once a fortnight; but, except upon the rare occasion of administering the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, always upon a week-day. And thus they are called away from their labours in the field, at a season, perhaps, when every hour is precious, and in a climate where the whole season for agricultural labour is but brief, and in a country where labour is so scarce that, in settlements like these, the settler and his family are the sole labourers themselves. And then, when Sunday comes, they will not profane by labour their day of rest, nor suffer those belonging to them to do so; but their church is shut up, and no pastor is seen among them. There are many among them, I doubt not, who devoutly improve the day in their families; but the young people are growing up without its being associated with the ordinances of the house of God, and in the danger of making it a day of mere idleness. All this the people have keenly felt, yet they have not murmured, hut have thankfully appreciated what has been done for them, and have very generally resisted any endeavours to make advantage of their open Sunday, to draw them off, in affection and duty, from their Church. Feeling the imperative necessity of dividing this unwieldy mission, and particularly of supplying the want which is here indicated, and having, as has been seen above, made up my mind that the mission of Danville ought not to be kept up, and that, therefore, whatever might be decided by the Society respecting the appropriations from the clergy reserves, the case might be provided for by the transfer of that mission to this locality, I intimated to the people, before we parted, a hope of being able, before any great lapse of time, to effect such arrangement. As I was riding away, some of the leading men cried after me, “Well! you have gladdened the hearts of the people of Kilkenny this day.” They have undertaken to add 10 l. a year to the salary of the missionary, payable through the Church Society, and with a guarantee from their churchwardens, if they can have Sunday service.
Mr. Fleming, who, in pursuance of the proposal just mentioned, and under the arrangement intimated in my notes of the I8th August, has since been settled at New Glasgow, with the charge of that place, of Paisley, and of Kilkenny, all taken off from the mission of Mascouche, will afford regular Sunday service at Kilkenny, and will, I trust, by God’s blessing, be acceptable and useful to the people. Mascouche and Terrebonne, with some occasional visits to more distant points, are reserved to Mr. Flanagan. The Society, I persuade myself, will readily approve of what I have done.
We struck, by a cross path, into the road leading to New Glasgow, and at this place exchanged our riding-horses for a light waggon, in which we proceeded at once to Mascouche. A broken bridge obliged us to take an unusual road, which prolonged our drive. In one part of it we came through a broad straight vista of wood, continued for a great length, with one interruption of open fields, upon a perfectly level road. The effect was beautiful, especially in the former part of the wood, where noble pines, as straight as an arrow, reminded one of the description, which I quote from the memory of many years, of the elms about the house of Sir Roger de Coverley, which had “shot up so exceeding high, that the rooks and crows, which were above them, seemed to be cawing in {mother region;’ although, indeed, there were no crows, that I know of, about these pines, and there are no rooks in Canada. These pines were intermixed with a profusion of very flourishing larches, and with other trees of deciduous kinds.
Mr. Flanagan had kindly wished that I should be his guest; but Mrs. F. had just been confined, and I found, according to former experience, a hearty welcome at Grace Hall, the manor house of Mascouche. Mr. Pangman invited Mr. Flanagan to dine there daily during nay stay.
August 29.—There were no public duties marked out for me this day, in the arrangements which Mr. Flanagan had made. My old task of letter-writing comes back upon me in every little break of the journey, and I was engaged with Mr. F. upon the affairs of his mission; but I found time to stroll about the heights which surround the quiet little valley in which the manor house is situated—an exceedingly long building, of one story in height, with an enclosed kind of court before it, planted with firs and other trees. The little river which winds along the valley, and turns the seigneurial mill, passes through the immediate precincts of the house. The valley is embosomed in broken banks and hills, here closely wooded, and there ornamented by open groves or chimps of pines; the level below, by the river side, with park-like forest-trees; the swells, slopes, and sheltered hollows of the ground, are disposed by the hand of Nature with the happiest variety. I had never seen this spot before in summer, and was tempted to describe it in my notes, while the impression was fresh, and have transferred the description to these pages, although I have dealt too much already in this kind of thing. Mr. Pangman, and his amiable family, seemed as if they might be called the tenants of the Happy Valley.
The parsonage is pleasantly situated on the hill above, close to the little church; and the burying-ground opposite is shaded by handsome pines.
CONFIRMATION AT MASCOUCHE.
August. 30, Sunday.—I preached in the morning to about one hundred persons, rather more than the church will well accommodate; but chairs had been set in the aisle for the occasion. Twenty-seven were confirmed. In the afternoon I preached again to about half the number—the Protestants here, as at Nicolet, being a scattered body, intermixed with the Roman Catholic population, and some of them having far to go home. I admitted two candidates to confirmation, who had been prepared, but, from particular circumstances, were too late in the morning; and I baptized the child of the reverend missionary with another. Fifty-eight persons, in all, were confirmed in this mission.
An old gentleman of the medical profession, of the name of Munro, living at the next parish, was introduced to me at the parsonage house, who seemed to have been much interested by the services of the day, and whose recollections were carried back to his own confirmation, performed about 1787, by Bishop Inglis of Nova Scotia, the first of our Colonial Bishops, and the father of the present Bishop of the same see, when he paid an official visit to Canada. This old gentleman makes the fourth living individual of my own acquaintance who received confirmation at the same hands—the hands of the only Colonial Bishop of the Church of England then in the world.