stage, but in 1830 it {23} was still
necessary, if one scorned the bateau, to make the whole journey from
Cornwall to Prescott by land, over one of the worst through roads in
the province. The Canadian stage of the day was a wonderful
contrivance, a heavy lumbering box, slung on leather straps instead of
springs, and often made without doors in order that, when fording
bridgeless streams, the water might not flow in. With the window as
the only means of exit, heavy-built passengers found it somewhat
awkward when called upon, as they often were, to clamber out in order
to ease the load uphill, or to wait while oxen from a neighbouring farm
dragged the stage out of a mud-hole. The traveller who 'knew the
ropes' provided himself with buffalo-skins or cushions; others went
without. Arrived at Prescott, the passengers shifted to a river
steamer, fitted more commodiously than the little boats used in the
lower stretches, but still providing no sleeping quarters except in
open bunks circling round the dining-saloon.

For thousands of the immigrants who were pouring into Upper Canada the
fares of the river steamer were still prohibitive. Many came on
bateaux, sometimes poled along as {24} of yore, sometimes taken in tow
by a steamer. Often more than a hundred immigrants, men, women, and
children, would be crowded into a single thirty-foot bateau, 'huddled
together,' a traveller notes, 'as close as captives in a slave trader,
exposed to the sun's rays by day, and the river damp by night, without
protection.'[2] Still more used the Durham boat for the river journey.
This famous craft was a large, flat-bottomed barge, with round bow and
square stern. With centre-board down and mainsail and topsail set on
its fixed mast, it made fair progress in the wider stretches. But on
the up trip it was for the most part poled or 'set' along. Each of the
crew took his stand at the bow end of one of the narrow gangways which
ran along both sides of the boat, set firmly in the river bottom his
long, heavy, iron-shod pole, put his shoulder to it, and, bending
almost double, walked along the gangway to the stern and inch by inch
forced the boat up-stream. 'The noise made by the clanking of the iron
against the stones, as the poles were drawn up again toward the bow,
could be heard for a long distance on a calm summer's day.' Finally,
at Prescott or Kingston the Durham boat was exchanged for {25} the
lower decks of the steamer, and the