Sisters in the Wilderness by Charlotte Gray Page A

will never be realised.”
    Catharine’s first introduction to the New World was far more pleasant than her sister’s. While the Rowley was anchored close to the south shore of the St. Lawrence about two hundred miles from Quebec City,awaiting a pilot, Thomas rowed ashore with the captain onto a little promontory called Pointe au Bic. He returned with an armful of flowers. After five weeks at sea, without a glimpse of anything green and growing, Catharine the amateur botanist was overjoyed. Her eyes filled with tears as she took the bouquet from Thomas and buried her face in it. She identified some of the blossoms, such as the sweet peas and wild roses, but realized with excitement that others were entirely unfamiliar. What was the name of this white orchid? Or these small yellow-andwhite flowers? Were they unique to the New World, and how would she ever be able to learn their names? She carefully carried them off to the cabin and flattened them out between the pages of her Bible to preserve them. To a student of nature, the prospect of finding and identifying new species was thrilling.
    When the Rowley arrived at Grosse Ile, its passengers were all forbidden to step ashore since none had travelled steerage. Catharine was not plunged into the dirty, hungry, shrieking crowd of new emigrants, as her sister Susanna had been; she did not see them cavorting around on the rocks or doing their stinking wash at the water’s edge. Susanna’s “perfect paradise” was all Catharine saw—a happy, colourful scene in the distance that reminded her of a fairground, with clothes waving in the wind, women basking in the sunshine and children chasing each other through the water. She didn’t believe the customs officer who told her that what she was looking at was really “every variety of disease, vice, poverty, filth and famine.” Similarly, she never went ashore at Quebec City, because of the cholera there. All she could do was marvel at the scenery. With only European experience to go by, she happily assumed that the stands of old trees on the sparsely populated south shore hid “pretty villas and houses.” At the end of the day, the sound of church bells rang across the water through the warm summer air, summoning citizens to evening prayer. As she sat on board the Rowley, Catharine could still imagine that Canada was a land of milk and honey—particularly when the captain reappeared from the customs inspection with a basket of ripe apples for her, plus fresh meat, vegetables, bread, butter and milk.
    In late August 1832, Thomas and Catharine finally stepped off the Rowley and onto Canadian soil in Montreal, then the largest city in British North America. Situated where the Ottawa River flowed into the mighty St. Lawrence, it had been the centre of the fur trade for over a century. It could not compare with the cities that Catharine knew best, London or even Norwich, with their ancient churches and palaces. It didn’t have properly paved streets or decent drains, and there were uneasy relations between the English-speakers and French-speakers who made up, in about equal numbers, its population of thirty thousand. However, it could already boast a handsome Catholic cathedral, plus several massive stone colleges, nunneries, barracks and bank buildings. And the Scots merchants who ran all the shipping and trading companies housed themselves in mansions quite grand enough to compete with the merchants of the Old World.
    None of this wealth was apparent, though, when the Traills arrived, and the newcomers were not impressed by the city. They found themselves enveloped in the foul smell of open sewers as they walked through narrow, garbage-strewn streets to the Hotel Nelson, on Place Jacques Cartier. The 1832 cholera epidemic had swept through Montreal, wiping out whole families and orphaning infants. Catharine was horrified by the mean houses, the ragged street urchins, the drunken