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A Yankee in Canada

by Henry D. Thoreau

We left Montreal Wednesday, the 2d of October, late in the afternoon. In the LaPrairie cars the Yankees made themselves merry, imitating the cries of the charrette-drivers to perfection, greatly to the amusement of some French-Canadian travellers, and they kept it up all the way to Boston. I saw one person on board the boat at St. Johnes, and one or two more elsewhere in Canada, wearing homespun gray great-coats, or capotes, with conical and comical hoods, which fell back betwen their shoulders like small bags, ready to be turned up over the head when occasion required, though a hat usurped that place now. They looked as if they would be convenient and proper enough as long as the coats were new and tidy, but would soon come to have a beggarly and unsightly look, akin to rags and dust-holes. We reached Burlington early in the morning, where the Yankees tried to pass off their Canada coppers, but the news-boys knew better. Returning through the Green Mountains, I was reminded that I had not seen in Canada such brilliant autumnal tints as I had previously seen in Vermont. Perhaps there was not yet so great and sudden a contrast with the summer heats in the former country as in these mountain valleys. As we were passing through Ashburnham, by a new white house which stood at some distance in a field, one passenger exclaimed, so that all in the car could hear him, "There, therees not so good a house as that in all Canada!" I did not much wonder at his remark, for there is a neatness, as well as evident prosperity, a certain elastic easiness of circumstances, so to speak, when not rich, about a New England house, as if the proprietor could at least afford to make repairs in the spring, which the Canadian houses do not suggest. Though of stone, they are not better constructed than a stone barn would be with us; the only building, except the chafateau, and while every village here contains at least several gentlemen or "squires", there there is but one to a seigniory.

I got home this Thursday evening, having spent just one week in Canada and travelled eleven hundred miles. The whole expense of this journey, including two guidebooks and a map, which cost one dollar twelve and a half cents, was twelve dollars seventy five cents. I do not suppose that I have seen all British America; that could not be done by a cheap excursion, unless it were a cheap excursion to the Icy Sea, as seen by Hearne or McKenzie, and then, no doubt, some interesting features would be omitted. I wished to go a little way behind that word Canadense, of which naturalists make such frequent use; and I should like still right well to make a longer excursion on foot through the wilder parts of Canada, which perhaps might be called Iter Canadense.

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  • Biography
  • Books:
    • Walden; or, Life in the Woods (172 pages)
    • The Maine Woods (153 pages)
    • Cape Cod (112 pages)
    • A Yankee in Canada (45 pages)
    • A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (197 pages)
  • Major Essays:
    • Civil Disobedience (16 pages)
    • Slavery in Massachusetts (10 pages)
    • Life Without Principle (13 pages)
    • A Walk to Wachusett (10 pages)
    • A Winter Walk (10 pages)
    • Walking (21 pages)
    • Natural History of Massachusetts (14 pages)
    • The Succession of Forest Trees (10 pages)
    • Autumnal Tints (20 pages)
    • Wild Apples (16 pages)
  • Other Essays  »
  • Correspondence  »
  • Poems  »
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