A Vacation Tour in the United States and Canada

London. Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1855, 1855. 1st Edition. Hardcover. 20cm, the first edition, xi,394, [2,24]p., publisher's ads., folding frontis map, outline colour, in the original wavy grain green cloth, gilt spine titles, black stamped borders and border decorations on the boards, series titles on the coated warm brown endpapers, some soil flecking on the spine, titles clear, a very good copy (n1) T.P.L. 3620. Howes W-234. Waterston p101. C.R. Weld, whose book is particularly interesting because he was the much younger half-brother of pioneer traveller Isaac Weld, found some Canadian scenes unchanged since 1799. Quebec was still characterized by simple piety. But the "airline" railways, the steamers ("huge floated hotels"), the charming villas in Toronto, the Victoria Railway Bridge in Montreal, all showed dramatic changes. This chatty book offers sharp vignettes: the Thousand Islands masked by smoke from forest fires; a Parliamentary opening in Quebec with Mackenzie, Papineau, Hincks and MacNab among the speakers; Major Strickland near Peterborough calling his pupils to school by blowing a horn, and presenting "very gentlemanlike conduct" in spite of a "brigandish appearance". Waterston. The author travels from Boston, to Ogdensburg, Prescott, Kingston, Peterborough, Coburg, Montreal, Quebec, Toronto, Niagara, Niagara, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Columbus, Washington, Richmond, Baltimore, and New York.