The Sun.
London, England, 1860-09-18 00:00:00

charm it did possess in the earlier stages of this
progress. Only two days since I was informed
that a gentleman with a sumptuous wardrobe, pre-
pared for following the Prince throughout, re-
ceived a notice that his trunks had gone per last
mail to England. lam bound to add that this in-
timation was accompanied with a courteous assur-
ance that they should be returned at the first op-
portunity. The fact is that the American system
of checking luggage through to destinations—ad-
mirable in ordinary travelling—does not answer
for unusual emergencies. Only a certain number of
brass checks are allowed for each place, and when
these run out your luggage gets checked wildly all
over the States of Canada, and at last doesn't get
checked at all, when, of course, it is left behind or
taken on, or. something or other done with it in the
long interval which elapses before you see it again
—if ever you do so at all. By the merest accident I
discovered, when coming up from Quebec, that one
of my trunks was " checked" through to Chicago
and another for Portland, both intended for Mon-
' treal.

The morning of Saturday, the Ist of September,
was really bright and beautiful, a fact which is
worth recording, considering that the day was
fixed for ceremonial and rejoicing in honour of the
?rince. With colonial promptitude the people got
up in what Brummel would call the middle of the
night, and at 8 a.m. the one or two good thorough-
fares of Ottawa were as thronged as they could
well be, considering that the " capital" only boasts
some 12,000 inhabitants—very little if at all more
than now belongs to Sydenham or Norwood.
Ottawa, the capital of Canada, is such a mon-
strous absurdity, that, like all who ever penetrated
to its wilds, I can never treat its metropolitan fu-
ture as anything more than a bad practical joke, in
which no one ever saw any meaning, but which,
now that the Prince has laid the foundation stone
of " intended" Parliament buildings, is considered
as having gone rather too far, and is slowly but
surely awakening a deep feeling of indignation
throughout all Canada. The site which has been
chosen for the capital is one of the most picturesque
I ever saw for any city in my life, save that on
which Constantinople has been founded • but a
merely picturesque situation is no'reason for build-
ing a capital when all other requisites are deficient,
or if so, the Chaudiere Falls or those of Montmo-
renci would certainly have been preferable to this.
Ottawa must always be the centre of the lumber
trade ; with a few thousand pounds' outlay it may
be made an impregnable fortress ; but a great city,
much less a capital, it never can become. The geo-
graphical features of the country are against it.
Surrounded by wide shallow rapids, over which the
great bluffs of cliff and headlands lean in beautiful
disarray, it will require more than another Victoria-
bridge ever to give means of communication be-
tween one side of the river and the other. The
river itself for commercial purposes is entirely use-
less. It is too shallow for any but such steamers as
ply between Mortlake and Richmond, while all
means of access to the stream above the city are
cut off by the steep Falls of the Ottawa, which pour
over the cliffs of limestone just above the timber-
shoots. If Ottawa were a fortified town like Quebec;
if it were not close on the frontier of the United
States; if it were only inhabited by English settlers,
or werenow, or ever had in future times the chance
of becoming a great city, there possibly might have
been some reason for the extreme step of changing
the seat of Government from Montreal to this place.
But in all and every of these points of view, either
commercially, strategically, or legislatively, the
choice of Ottawa has been a grand mistake; and if
persevered in it will, at no distant date, give rise to
great troubles in Canada. Throughout the whole
province there is a deep-rooted and fast-increasing
dissatisfaction with the choice. The expression of
this each day grows stronger and more strong. As
well might the Queen by her own act select Vent-
nor as the seat of the Government of England. The
change from the city of Montreal to the village of
Ottawa, be it remembered, was the act of the
Home Government, and forced upon the Canadians
in spite of their remonstrance and entreaty Ever
since that it has borne bitter fruits, which are
ripening now day by day. After this Royal visit,
after the personal experience of the Duke of New-
castle, the Home Government may with a good
grace recant their former error, and for the last
time transfer the Government from Ottawa to the
only real capital of Canada—Montreal. The Cana-
dians, 1 am sure, expect this act of grace, and,
whether well given or ill given, will surely have
it somehow at last. The great natural highway of
Canada, the St. Lawrence, has been departed from,
and an out-of-the-way backwoods town has been
selected for the capital of what must in future be a
great and thriving country. In the present state
of feeling among all classes of the Canadians—
English, French, or Irish—two years cannot elapse
before the capital will be transferred to Montreal,
either by the Government or the people. The
appearance of Ottawa, as it now is, is very like
the harbour of Sebastopol ; and if one can imagine
the heights of that stronghold clad down to the
water's edge with thick pine-trees, and a huge
cascade pouring over a high reef of rocks at the
head of the harbour, then you see Ottawa. Thus
much for this intended city.
On Saturday, the Ist of September, the Prince
proceeded to lay the corner stone of the Parliament
buildings, which, if their plan is carried out accord-
ing to- the present design, will prove the finest
Gothic buildings in all America. They err, per-
haps, like all the earlier Gothic structures, on the
side of heaviness ; but, this fault excepted, they
will be grand, regal, and ancient looking enough to
satify even Mr. Scott himself.
The ceremony of laying a foundation stone is, of
course, like opening a bridge (which has been tra-
versed for months), or inaugurating waterworks, or
any other meagre and unsatisfactory State ceremo-
nial which Royalty is occasionally compelled to en-
dure in deference to public feeling. At that of
Saturday the splendid silver trowel was, of course,an
object of interest second only to the Prince himself,
and people who couldn't see the trowel concentrated
their attention on the stone—a great block of white
marble, with an inscription to the effect that " This
stone of the buildings intended to receive the Par-
liament of Canada was laid," &c. The delightful
ambiguity about the word " intended" was a source
, of unalloyed satisfaction to nearly all present. The
scaffolding over the stone was in the form of a hand-
some Gothic arch. The seats were ranged in
tiers around it. The legislative members had the
front places, whereat they grumbled exceed-
ingly, and decried the arrangements in every tense
and mood. There was a dais near the stone, with
three seats and a full-length portrait of the Queen in
the centre of the enclosure, and which, in order that
the spectators might judge of the artist's work from
a disinterested point of view, was placed on its head.
When these facts are noted down, and it is further
stated that the day was hot and clear, all that re-
quires to be said about the preparations for laying
the foundation stone of the " intended" Parliament
buildings has been told. One feature, however, con-
nected with the fete, which, though not prepared,
was especially prominent, deserves some mention,
and that is the mud. Mud is the only thing which
has, as yet, been completed and brought to perfec-
tion in the city of Ottawa, and there, indeed, it lies
about the streets in quagmires which saurians might
revel in.
The Prince came out on the dais at 11 o'clock, and
in five minutes after the stone was declared by him
to be " well and truly laid," and the ceremony was
over. Before this the portrait of her Majesty had
been restored to the position originally intended by
the painter, and was placed at the back of the
Prince's chair. This, as the ceremony concluded,
was slipped aside, disclosing a private way out, and
while those in the outskirts of the crowd were won-
dering when the stone was to be laid the Prince was
quietly walking back to his hotel. So everybody
gradually made a move towards the dais, and half
Ottawa waited and took turns to sit down in the
chair of State, in which the Prince had never sat
at all.
After the Parliament buildings came a levee,
which was soon over, when the Prince drove round
the town. The few conveyances that were in
Ottawa then let at once at 50 dole. an hour, and at
this rather heavy figure were taken up eagerly,
so that before the Prince had gone 100 yards he -
was followed by a long train of vehicles of every
kind, all splashing through the mud in wild con-
fusion. The little town was soon traversed almost
from end to end, and almost every street elicited
new expressions of approbation at the singular
architectural beauty and grace of its triumphal
arches. Whatever else it may want, Ottawa is not
deficient in genuine good taste, for both in form and
decoration, though not in number, its arches are far
finer than those of any town the Prince has yet vi-
sited. They were indeed so good, and so purely
Gothic, as to excite a very general suspicion that
some one or other connected with the " intended"
Parliamentary buildings had designed them. After
this drive there was a dejeuner in rather a more
costly style than usual, from which his Royal High-
ness retired early, for ho had yet to visit the Falls of
the Ottawa, the Lumber-arch, and the timber-
shoots. This he did at 5 o'clock in the afternoon,
all Ottawa and as many inhabitants as could be
spared from the surrounding wilderness being on
the road to cheer him, and follow him in all he did
and to all he saw.
He drove from the Victoria Hotel to the suspen-
sion bridge over the Falls of the Ottawa, where the
whole mass of the river comes tumbling down a
series of huge cliffs of a laminated kind of lime-
stone, much like the Natural Steps at Montmorenci,
with a cataract coming over them. These falls are
wonderfully picturesque, more so for their ciecayed
masses of rock than for heir rush of water. They
somehow look as if they were out of repair and fall-