Joel Cook

XIV.

DESCENDING THE RIVER ST. LAWRENCE.

The Great River of Canada—Jacques Cartier—The Great Lakes—The Ancient Course—The St. Lawrence Canals—Toronto—Lake of the Thousand Islands—Kingston—Garden of the Great Spirit—Clayton—Frontenac—Round Island—Alexandria Bay—Brockville—Ogdensburg—Prescott—Galop, Plat and Long Sault Rapids—Cornwall—St. Regis—Lake St. Francis—Coteau, Split Rock, Cascades and Cedars Rapids—Lake St. Louis—Lachine—Caughnawaga—Lachine Rapids—Montreal—St. Mary's Current—St. Helen's Island—Montreal Churches and Religious Houses—Hochelaga—First Religious Colonization—DauversiÈre and Olier—Society of Notre Dame de Montreal—Maisonneuve—Mademoiselle Mance—Marguerite Bourgeoys—Madame de la Peltrie—The Accommodation—Victoria Tubular Bridge—Seminary of St. Sulpice—Hotel Dieu—The Black Nuns—The Gray Nunnery—McGill University—Place d'Armes—Church of Notre Dame—Cathedral of St. Peter—Notre Dame de Lourdes—Christ Church Cathedral—Champ de Mars—Notre Dame de Bonsecours—Rapids of St. Anne—Lake of the Two Mountains—Trappists—Mount Royal—Ottawa River—Long Sault Rapids—ThermopylÆ—Louis Joseph Papineau—Riviere aux LiÈvres—The Habitan—The Metis—Ottawa—Bytown—ChaudiÈre Falls—Rideau Canal—Dominion Government Buildings—Richelieu River—Lake St. Peter—St. Francis River—Three Rivers—Shawanagan Fall—St. Augustin—Sillery—Quebec—Stadacona—Samuel de Champlain—Montmagny—Laval de Montmorency—Jesuit Missionaries—Father Davion—The French Gentilhomme—Cape Diamond—Charles Dilke—Henry Ward Beecher—Castle of St. Louis—Quebec Citadel—Wolfe-Montcalm Monument—General Montgomery—Plains of Abraham—General Wolfe—The Basilica—The Seminary—English Cathedral—Bishop Mountain—The Ursulines—Marie Guyart—Montcalm's Skull—Hotel Dieu—Fathers BrÉbeuf and Lalemont and their Martyrdom—Notre Dame des Victoires—Dufferin Terrace—Point Levis—Beauport—French Cottages—Faith of the Habitans—Cardinal Newman—Falls of Montmorency—La Bonne Sainte Anne—Isle of Orleans—St. Laurent and St. Pierre—The Laurentides—Cape Tourmente—Bay of St. Paul—Mount Eboulements—Murray Bay—Kamouraska—Riviere du Loup—Cacouna—Tadousac—Saguenay River—Grand Discharge and Little Discharge—Ha Ha Bay—Chicoutimi—Capes Trinity and Eternity—Restigouche Region—Micmac Indians—Glooscap—Lorette—Roberval—Lake St. John—Montaignais Indians—Trois Pistoles—Rimouski—GaspÉ—Notre Dame Mountains—Labrador—Grand Falls—The Fishermen.

THE GREAT RIVER OF CANADA.

"The first time I beheld thee, beauteous stream,

How pure, how smooth, how broad thy bosom heav'd!

What feelings rushed upon my heart!—a gleam

As of another life my kindling soul received."

Thus sang Maria Brooks to the noble river St. Lawrence, which the earlier geographers always called "the Great River of Canada." The first adventurous white man who crossed the seas and found it was the intrepid French navigator, Jacques Cartier, who sailed into its broad bay on the festival day of the martyred Saint Lawrence, in 1534. When this bold explorer started from France on his voyage of discovery he was fired with religious zeal. St. Malo, on the coast of Brittany, was then the chief French seaport, and before departing, the entire company of officers and sailors piously attended a solemn High Mass in the old Cathedral, and in the presence of thousands received the venerable Archbishop's blessing upon their enterprise. Cartier, like all the rest of the early discoverers, was sent under the auspices of the French Government to hunt for the "Northwest Passage," the short route from Europe to the Indies, or, as described in his instructions, to seek "the new road to Cathay." The Church naturally bestowed its most earnest benisons upon an enterprise promising unlimited religious expansion in the realms France might secure across the Atlantic. Carrier's chief ship was only of one hundred and twenty tons, but the little fleet crossed the ocean in safety, and on July 9th entered a large bay south of the St. Lawrence, encountering such intense heats that it was named the Bay de Chaleurs, being still thus called. After an extensive examination of the neighboring coasts and bays, Cartier returned home, reporting that the Canadian summers were as warm as those of France, but giving no information of the extreme cold of the winters. This the sun-loving Gauls did not discover until later. Cartier came back the next year, and sailed up what he had already named the "Great River," describing it as the most enormous in the world. The Indians told his wondering sailors "it goes so far that no man hath ever been to the end that they had heard." The explorers carefully examined the vast stream, its shores and branches, and were sure, as they reported, that its sombre tributary, the Saguenay, "comes from the Sea of Cathay, for in this place there issues a strong current, and there runs here a terrible tide." They saw numerous whales and other sea-monsters, but found the water too deep for soundings, and in fact the river St. Lawrence cannot be sounded for one hundred and fifty miles up from its mouth.

ITS VAST EXTENT AND FEATURES.

The St. Lawrence is an enormous river, having much the largest estuary of any river on the globe, the tidal current flowing five hundred miles up the stream, and its mouth spreading ninety-six miles wide. It is the outlet of the greatest body of fresh water in existence, draining seven vast lakes—Nepigon, Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, Ontario and Champlain—besides myriads of smaller ones, including the Central New York lakes, hundreds in the Adirondack forests, and thousands in the vast Canadian wilderness. The St. Lawrence basin covers a territory of over four hundred thousand square miles, and has been computed as containing more than half the fresh water on the planet. The main St. Lawrence river is seven hundred and fifty miles long from Lake Ontario to the head of the Gulf, while the total length of the whole system of lakes and rivers is over two thousand miles, and has been computed by some patient mathematician to contain a mass of fresh water equal to twelve thousand cubic miles, of which one cubic mile goes over Niagara Falls every week. The early geographers usually located the head of the system in Lake Nepigon, north of Superior, but it is thought the longer line to the ocean is from the source of St. Louis River, flowing through Minnesota into the southwestern extremity of Lake Superior at Duluth. The bigness of the wonderful St. Lawrence is shown in everything about it. Thoreau, who was such a keen observer, has written that this great river rises near another "Father of Waters," the Mississippi, and "issues from a remarkable spring, far up in the woods, fifteen hundred miles in circumference," called Lake Superior, while "it makes such a noise in its tumbling down at one place (Niagara) as is heard all round the world." The geologists, however, who usually upturn most things, declare that it did not always reach the sea as now. Originally the St. Lawrence, they say, flowed into the ocean by going out through the Narrows in New York harbor, and its immense current broke the passage through the West Point Highlands in a mighty stream, compared with which the present Hudson River is a pigmy. Professor Newberry writes that during countless ages this enormous river, which no human eyes beheld, carried off the surplus waters of a great drainage area with a rapid current cutting down its gorge many hundred feet in depth, reaching from the Lake Superior basin to the Narrows, where it dispersed in a vast delta, debouching upon a sea then much lower in level than now, and having its shore-line about eighty miles southeast of New York. By some stupendous convulsion this channel was changed, drift banked up the old valley of the Mohawk, and the outflow was deflected from the northeast corner of Lake Ontario into the present shallow and rocky channel, filled with islands and rapids, followed by the St. Lawrence down to Montreal.

The system of navigable water ways from Duluth and Port Arthur on Lake Superior to the Strait of Belle Isle is twenty-two hundred miles long. At Lake Ontario the head of the St. Lawrence River is two hundred and thirty-one feet above the sea level, and its current descends that distance to tidewater chiefly by going down successive rapids. There are ship canals around these rapids and around Niagara Falls, and also connecting various lakes above. The Sault Sainte Marie locks and canals, at the outlet of Lake Superior, have already been described. The admirable systems conducting navigation around the rapids in the river below Lake Ontario also carry a large tonnage. Between Ogdensburg and Montreal, a distance of about one hundred and twenty miles, the navigation of forty-three miles is through six canals of various lengths around the rapids, each having elaborate locks. The Gulf of St. Lawrence is also constructed upon an enormous scale, covering eighty thousand square miles, and with the lower river having a tidal ebb and flow of eighteen to twenty-four feet. The mouth of the river and head of the Gulf are usually located at Cape Chatte, far below the Saguenay, and from the Cape almost up to Quebec the river is ten to thirty miles wide. In front of Quebec it narrows to less than a mile, while above, the width is from one to two and a half miles to Montreal, expanding to ten miles at Lake St. Peter, where the tidal influence ceases. Above Montreal the river occasionally expands into lakes, but is generally a broad and strongly flowing stream with frequent rapids. The largest ocean vessels freely ascend to Montreal, at the head of ship navigation, Lachine rapids being just above the city. For several months in winter, however, ice prevents.

THE CITY OF TORONTO.

Lake Ontario, out of which the river St. Lawrence flows, is nearly two hundred miles long, and in some places seventy miles wide. It has generally low shores and but few islands, and the name given it by Champlain was Lake St. Louis, after the King of France. The original Indian name, however, has since been retained, Ontario meaning "how beautiful is the rock standing in the water." Three well-known Canadian cities are upon its shores—Hamilton at the western end, Toronto on the northern coast, and Kingston near the eastern end. Hamilton is a busy, industrial and commercial city of fifty thousand people, having a good harbor. The great port, however, is Toronto, with over two hundred thousand inhabitants, the capital of the Province of Ontario, and the headquarters of the Scottish and Irish Protestants, who settled and rule Upper Canada, the richest and most populous province of the Dominion. Toronto means "the place of meeting," and the word was first heard in the seventeenth century as applied to the country of the Hurons, between Lakes Huron and Simcoe, the name being afterwards given to the Indian portage route, starting from Lake Ontario, in the present city limits, over to that country. Here, in 1749, the French established a small trading-post, Fort Rouille, but there was no settlement to speak of for a century or more. The United Empire Loyalists, under General Simcoe, founded the present city in 1793 under the name of York, and it was made the capital of Upper Canada, of which Simcoe was Governor. The location was an admirable one. The portage led up a romantic little stream, now called Humber River, while out in front was an excellent harbor, protected by a long, low, forest-clad island, making a perfect land-locked basin, sheltered from the storms of the lake. The nucleus of a town was thus started on a tract of marshy land, adjoining the Humber, familiarly known for nearly a half century as "Muddy Little York," which characteristic a part of the city still retains, as the pedestrian in falling weather can testify. Yet the site is a pleasing one—two little rivers, the Humber and the Don, flowing down to the lake through deep and picturesque ravines, having the city between and along them, while there is a gradual slope upward to an elevation of two hundred feet and over at some distance inland, an ancient terrace, which was the bank of the lake.

The town did not grow much at first, and during the War of 1812 it was twice captured by the Americans, but they could not hold it long. As the back country was settled and lake navigation afterwards developed, however, the harbor became of importance and the city grew, being finally incorporated as Toronto. Then it got a great impetus and became known as the "Queen City," its geographical advantages as a centre of railway as well as water routes attracting a large immigration, so that it has grown to be the second city in Canada, and its people hope it may outstrip Montreal and become the first. It has achieved a high rank commercially, and in religion and education, so that there are substantial grounds for the claim, often made, that it is the "Boston of Canada." It contains a church for about every thousand inhabitants, Sunday is observed with great strictness, and it has in the University of Toronto the chief educational foundation in the Dominion, and in the Toronto Globe the leading organ of Canadian Liberalism. The city spreads for eight miles along the lake shore; the streets are laid out at right angles, and there are many fine buildings. Yonge Street, dividing the city, stretches northward from the harbor forty miles inland to the shore of Lake Simcoe. There are attractive residential streets, with many ornate dwellings in tasteful gardens. St. James' Cathedral, near Yonge Street, is a fine Early English structure, with a noble clock and a grand spire rising three hundred and sixteen feet. There is a new City Hall, an enormous Romanesque building with an impressive tower, and Osgoode Hall, the seat of the Ontario Superior Courts, in Italian Renaissance, its name being given from the first Chief Justice of Upper Canada. In Queen's Park are the massive Grecian buildings of the Provincial Parliament, finished in 1892 at a cost of $1,500,000. This Park contains a bronze statue of George Brown, long a leading Canadian statesman, and a monument erected in memory of the men who fell in repelling the Fenian invasion of 1866.

The buildings of the University of Toronto, to the westward of the Queen's Park, are extensive and form a magnificent architectural group. The main building is Norman, with a massive central tower, rebuilt in 1890, after having been burnt. There are fifteen hundred students, and the University offers complete courses in the arts and sciences, law and medicine. To the northward is McMaster Hall, a Baptist theological college, tastefully constructed and liberally endowed. From the top of the tall University tower there is an admirable view over the city and far across the lake. The town spreads broadly out on either hand, running down to the harbor, beyond which is the narrow streak made by the low-lying island enclosing it. Far to the southward stretch the sparkling waters of Ontario, reaching to the horizon, while in the distance can be seen a faint little silver cloud of spray rising from Niagara. In the northern background villas dot the green and wooded hillsides, showing how the city spreads, while in every direction the incomplete buildings and the gentle distant noises of the builder's hammer and trowel testify to its robust growth. Many steamers move about the harbor, and among them are the ferry-boats carrying crowds over to the low-lying island, with its many amusement places, the city's great recreation ground. At Hanlon's Point, its western end, was long the home of Hanlon, the "champion sculler of the world," one of Toronto's celebrities.

THE LAKE OF THE THOUSAND ISLANDS.

Out of Ontario the great river St. Lawrence flows one hundred and seventy-two miles down to Montreal, being for much of the distance the boundary between the United States and Canada. Kingston, with twenty-five thousand people, guarded by picturesque graystone batteries and martello towers—the "Limestone City"—stands at the head of the river where it issues from the lake. To the westward is the entrance of the spacious Bay of QuintÉ, and on the eastern side the terminus of the Rideau Canal, leading northeastward to the Rideau River and Ottawa, the Canadian capital. This was originally the French Fort Cataraqui, established at the mouth of Cataraqui River in 1672, the name being subsequently changed by Count Frontenac to Frontenac. The Indian word Cataraqui means "Clay bank rising from the water," and after the fort was built the meaning changed to "fort rising from the water." Here the Sieur de La Salle, in 1678, built the first vessel navigating the lake. The British captured the fort in 1762, naming it Kingston, after the American Revolution, and by fortifying the promontories commanding the harbor, made it the strongest military post in Canada after Quebec and Halifax, the chief work being Fort Henry. Its garrisons have been long withdrawn, however, and now the old-time forts are useful chiefly as additions to the attractive scenery of its harbor and approaches. At the outlet of Ontario the course of the St. Lawrence begins with the noted archipelago known as the "Lake of the Thousand Islands," there being actually about seventeen hundred of them. This is a remarkable formation, composed largely of fragments of the range of Laurentian mountains, here coming southward out of Canada to the river, producing an extraordinary region. This Laurentian formation the geologists describe as the oldest land in the world—"the first rough sketch and axis of America." During countless ages this range has been worn down by the effect of rain, frost, snow and rivers, and scratched and broken by rough, resistless glaciers, and we are told that, compared with these fragmentary "Thousand Islands" and the almost worn-out mountains of the lower St. Lawrence basin, the Alps and the Andes are but creations of yesterday.

Wolfe Island broadly obstructs the Ontario outlet between Kingston and Cape Vincent on the New York shore, and from them, with an island-filled channel, in some places twelve miles broad, the swift river current threads the archipelago by pleasant and tortuous passages nearly to Ogdensburg, forty miles below. These islands are of all sizes, shapes and appearance, varying from small low rocks and gaunt crags to gorgeous foliage-covered gardens. On account of their large numbers, the early French explorers named them "Les Milles Isles," and in the ancient chronicles they are described as "obstructing navigation and mystifying the most experienced Iroquois pilots." Fenimore Cooper located some of the most interesting incidents of his Pathfinder in "that labyrinth of land and water, the Thousand Isles." The larger islands in spring and summer are generally covered with luxuriant vegetation, and the river shores are a delicious landscape of low but bold bluffs and fruitful fields spreading down to the water, with distant forests bounding the horizon. The atmosphere is usually dry, light and mellow, and the Indians, who admired this attractive region, appropriately called it Manatoana, or the "Garden of the Great Spirit." Howe Island adjoins Wolfe Island, and below is the long Grindstone Island. Here on the New York shore is the village of Clayton, where the New York Central Railroad comes up from Utica and Rome, the leading route to this region. Below is the almost circular Round Island with its large hotel, and everywhere are charming little islets, while ahead, down the St. Lawrence, are myriads more islands, apparently massed together in a maze of dark green distant foliage, the enchanted isles of a fascinating summer sea:

Sailing down the river, group after group of big and little green islands are passed, the winding route and tortuous channels marked by diminutive lighthouses and beacons, while nearly every island has its cottages and often ornate and elaborate villas. Everywhere the shores appear to be granite rocks, bright green foliage varying with the darker evergreens surmounting them. All the waters are brilliantly green and clear as crystal, rippled by breezes laden with balsamic odors from the adjacent forests. Attractive cottages everywhere appear, with little attendant boat-houses down by the water side, and canoes and skiffs are in limitless supply, as the chief travelling is by them. Everything seems to be full of life; in all directions are pleasant views, the surface is dotted with pleasure-boats and white-sailed yachts, the whole region being semi-amphibious, and its people spending as much time on the water as on the land. The river, too, is a great highway of commerce among these islands, many large vessels passing along, and timber rafts guided by puffing little tugs. Much of the product of the Canadian forests is thus taken to market, a good deal going to Europe, and the sentimental and often musical Metis, who live aboard in huts or tents, are the raftsmen, working the broad sails and big steering-paddles on the tedious floating journey down to Quebec. There are many large hotels, and the big one on Round Island is named for Louis XIV.'s chivalrous and fiery Governor of Canada, Count de Frontenac. His remains are buried in the Basilica at Quebec, and his heart, enclosed in a leaden casket, was sent home to his widow in France. She was much younger, and, evidently piqued at some of his alleged love affairs, refused to receive it, saying she would not have a dead heart which had not been hers while living. The Baptists have a summer settlement on Round Island, and a short distance below the extensive Wellesley Island has on its upper end the popular Methodist summer town of the Thousand Island Park, where little cottages and tents around the great Tabernacle often take care of ten thousand people. Upon the lower end the Presbyterians have established their attractive resort, Westminster Park, which faces Alexandria Bay.

ALEXANDRIA BAY.

The chief settlement of the archipelago is the village of Alexandria Bay on the New York shore, and in the spacious reach of the river in front are the most famous and costly of the island cottages. Here are large hotels and many lodging-places, with a swelling population in the height of the season. Some of the island structures are unique—tall castles, palaces, imitations of iron-clads, forts and turrets—and many have been very costly. As most of the summer residents are Americans, those cottages are chiefly on the American side of the boundary, but there is also quite a group of island cottages over near the Canadian shore adjacent to the village of Gananoque. Alexandria Bay is a diminutive indentation in the New York shore, with a little red lighthouse out in front, while over to the northeast is spread a galaxy of the most famous islands, having fifty or more pretentious cottages scattered about the scene, amid the green foliage surmounting the rocky island foundations. In every direction go off channels among them of sparkling, dancing, green water, giving fine vista views, the dark crags at the water's edge underlying the frame of green foliage bounding the picture. The population has an aquatic flavor, and everybody seems to go about in boats, while the place has the air of a purely pleasure resort, evidently frozen up and hybernating when the tide of summer travel ebbs. In the season, the village presents a nightly carnival with its many-colored lights and dazzling fireworks displays over the rippling waters. For miles below Alexandria Bay, the islands stud the waters, although not so numerous nor so closely together as they are above. The largest of these is the long and narrow Grenadier Island in mid-river. Farther down they are usually small, some being only isolated rocks almost awash. The last of the islands are at Brockville, twenty-five miles below Alexandria Bay—the group of "Three Sisters," one large and two smaller, apparently dropped into the river opposite the town as if intended to support the piers of a bridge over to Morristown on the New York shore. This is an old and quiet Canadian town of nine thousand people, perpetuating the memory of General Sir Isaac Brock, who fell in the battle of Queenston Heights in October, 1812, and which is developing into a summer resort. Such is the charmed archipelago of attractive islands, unlike almost anything else in America, which brings so many pleasure and health seekers to the St. Lawrence to sing its praises:

SHOOTING THE RAPIDS.

Ogdensburg is an active port on the St. Lawrence about twenty miles below Brockville, having a railroad through the Adirondacks over to Rouse's Point on Lake Champlain. Here flow in the dark-brown waters of the Oswegatchie, the Indian "Black River," coming out of those forests, which commingle in sharp contrast with the clear green current of the greater river. Prescott, antiquated and time-worn, is on the Canadian bank. The shores are generally low, with patches of woodland and farms, and the St. Lawrence below Ogdensburg begins to go down the rapids, having tranquil lakes and long wide stretches of placid waters intervening. The first rapid is the "Galop," flowing among flat grass-covered islands, with swift moving waters, but a small affair, scarcely discernible as the steamboat goes through it. The next one, the "Plat," is also passed without much trouble, and then a line of whitecaps ahead indicates the beginning of the "Long Sault," the most extensive rapid on the river. This is the "Long Leap," a rapid running for nine miles, its waters rushing down the rocky ledges at a speed of twenty miles an hour. All steam is shut off, and the river steamer is carried along by the movement of the seething, roaring current, the surface appearing much like the ocean in a storm. The rocking, sinking deck beneath one's feet gives a strange and startling sensation, and looking back at the incline down which the boat is sliding, it seems like a great angry wall of water chasing along from behind. An elongated island divides the channel through the "Long Sault," and there are other low islands adjacent; the boat, swaying among the rocks over which the waves leap in fury, being now lifted on their crests, and then dropped between them, but all the while gliding down hill, until still water and safety are reached at Cornwall. Here begins the northern boundary of New York, which goes due east through the Chateaugay forests across the land to Lake Champlain, and large factories front the river, getting their power from the waters above the rapid.

Below Cornwall, which has an industrial population of some seven thousand, and the Indian village of St. Regis opposite, the St. Lawrence is wholly within Canada, and far off to the southeast rise the dark and distant Adirondack ranges. Soon the river broadens into the sluggish Lake St. Francis, at the head of which two well-known Adirondack streams flow in, the Racquette and St. Regis Rivers. The ancient village of St. Regis has its old church standing up conspicuously with a bright tin roof, for the air is so dry that tin is not painted in the Dominion. The bell hanging in the spire was sent out from France for the early Indian mission, but before landing, the vessel carrying it was captured by a colonial privateer and taken into Salem, Massachusetts. The bell, with other booty from the prize, was sold and sent to a church in Deerfield, then on the Massachusetts frontier. The St. Regis Huron Indians heard of this, and making a long march down there, recaptured their bell, massacred forty-seven people, and carried all the rest who could not escape, one hundred and twenty of them, including the church pastor and his family, captives back to Canada. Thus they brought the bell in triumph to St. Regis, and it has since hung undisturbed in the steeple, although the Indians who now hear it have become very few. The lake is twenty-eight miles long and very monotonous, although a distinguishing landmark is furnished by the massive buildings of St. Aniset Church, seen from afar on the southern shore.

Coteau, at the end of the lake, has a railway swinging drawbridge, carrying the Canada Atlantic Railroad over, and below is another series of rapids. These are the "Coteau," with about two miles of swift current, making but slight impression; and then the "Cedars," "Split Rock," and the "Cascades." The "Cedars" give a sensation, being composed of layers of rock down which the boat slides, as if settling from one ledge suddenly down to another, producing a curious feeling. It was here, in 1759, that General Amherst, by a sad mishap, had three hundred troops drowned. The "Split Rock" rapid is named from enormous boulders standing at its entrance, and a dangerous reef can be distinctly seen from the deck as the steamer apparently runs directly upon it, until the pilot swerves the boat aside, seemingly just in time. Then, tossing for a few moments upon the white-crested waves of the "Cascades," the steamer glides peacefully upon the tranquil surface of Lake St. Louis, which is fifteen miles long, and receives from the north the Ottawa River. Each little village on the banks of the lake and rivers is conspicuous from the large Roman Catholic Church around which it clusters, the steep bright tin roof and spire far out-topping all the other buildings. At the lower end of the lake a series of light-ships guide vessels into Lachine Canal, which goes down to Montreal, avoiding Lachine rapids, three miles long, the shortest series, but most violent of them all. Here, at the head of the rapids, stood the early French explorer, sent out to search for "the road to Cathay," and looking over the great lake spread out before him, with a view like old ocean, he shouted "La Chine!" for he thought that China was beyond it. The Canadian Pacific Railway bridge spans the river, and skirting the southern shore is the Indian town of Caughnawaga, with its little old houses and light stone church, the "village on the rapids." The steamboat then slides down Lachine rapids, the most difficult and dangerous passage of all, though it lasts but a few minutes—the exciting inclined plane of water, with rocks ahead and rocks beneath, indicated by swift and foaming cataracts running over and between them, and by stout thumps against the keel, sometimes making every timber shiver, and the apparent danger giving keen zest to the termination of the voyage. These rapids passed, the current below quickly floats the steamboat under the great Victoria tubular bridge, carrying the Grand Trunk Railway over, and the broad stone quays of Montreal are spread along the bank, with rank after rank of noble buildings behind them, and the tall twin towers of Notre Dame Cathedral rising beyond, glistening under the rays of the setting sun.

THE CITY OF MONTREAL.

The delta of the great Ottawa—the "river of the traders," as the Indians named it, debouching by several mouths into the St. Lawrence, of which it is the chief tributary, makes a number of islands, and Montreal stands on the southeastern side of the largest of them, with the broad river flowing in front. St. Mary's current runs strongly past the quays, and out there are the pretty wooded mounds of St. Helen's Island, named after Helen BoullÉ, the child-wife of Samuel de Champlain, the first European woman who came to Canada. She was only twelve years old when he married her, he being aged forty-four, and after his death she became an Ursuline nun. The miles of city water-front are superbly faced with long-walled quays of solid limestone masonry, and marked by jutting piers enclosing basins for the protection of the shipping against the powerful current. At the extremities of the rows of shipping, on either hand, up and down stream, loom the huge grain elevators. The piers are about ten feet lower than the walled embankment fronting the city, this being done to allow the ice to pass over them when it breaks up at the end of winter, the movement—called the "Ice Shove"—being an imposing sight. The elongated Victoria Bridge stands upon its row of gray limestone piers guarding the horizon up-river to the southward. Many storehouses and stately buildings rise behind the wharves, and beyond these are myriads of steeples, spires and domes, with the lofty Notre Dame towers in front. The background is made by the imposing mountain giving Montreal its name, called Mont Real originally, and now known as Mount Royal, rising to an elevation of nine hundred feet. Few cities of its size can boast so many fine buildings. The excellent building-stone of the neighborhood, a gray limestone, is utilized extensively, and this adds to the ornamental appearance, the city rising upon a series of terraces stretching back from the river and giving many good sites for construction. Numerous, massive and elaborate, the multitude of costly houses devoted to religion, trade and private residences are both a surprise and a charm. Mount Royal, rising boldly behind them, gives not only a noble background to the view from the river, but also a grand point of outlook, displaying their beauties to the utmost. The city has wide streets, generally lined with trees, and various public squares adding to the attractiveness.

But the most prominent characteristic of the Canadian metropolis is the astonishing number of its convents, churches, and pious houses for religious and charitable uses. Churches are everywhere, built by all denominations, many being most elaborate and costly. The religious zeal of the community, holding all kinds of ecclesiastical belief, has found special vent in the universal development of church building. This commendable trait is their natural heritage, for the earliest French settlements on the St. Lawrence were largely due to religious zeal. When Jacques Cartier ascended the St. Lawrence upon his second voyage in 1535, he heard from the Indians at Quebec of a greater town far up the river, and bent upon exploration, he sailed in boats up to the Iroquois settlement of Hochelaga. Wrapped in forests behind it rose the great mountain which he named Mont Real, the "royal mountain," and in front, encompassed with corn-fields, was the Indian village, surrounded by triple rows of palisades. Landing, Cartier's party were admitted within the defensive walls to the central public square, where the squaws examined them with the greatest curiosity, and the sick and lame Indians were brought up to be healed, the ancient historian writes, "as if a god had come down among them." No sooner had Cartier landed and been thus welcomed than he gave thanks to Heaven, and the warriors sat in silence while he read aloud the Passion of Our Lord, though they understood not a word. The religious services over, he distributed presents, and the French trumpeters sounded a warlike melody, vastly pleasing the Indians. They conducted Cartier's party to the summit of the mountain and showed them an extensive view over unbroken forests for many miles to the dark Adirondacks far away and the distant lighter green mountains, which he called the "Monts Verts," to the eastward. There is a tablet placed in Metcalfe Street near Sherbrooke Street which marks the supposed site of the Indian village of Hochelaga. In 1608, when Champlain came, Hochelaga had disappeared. The fierce Hurons had destroyed the village and driven out the Iroquois, who had gone far south to the Mohawk Valley.

For three-quarters of a century the French seem to have waited after Cartier's voyages, before they made any serious attempt at settlement. Then there came a great religious revival, and they planned to combine religion and conquest in a series of expeditions in the early seventeenth century under the auspices of patron saints and sinners whose names are numerously reproduced in the nomenclature of Quebec Province, in mountains, rivers, lakes, bays, capes, counties, towns and streets. It was chiefly due to Champlain, however, that the French foothold was obtained. This great explorer, known as the "Father of Canada," was noted alike for personal bravery and religious fervor. His occupations in the New World were perilous journeys, prayers and fighting. He firmly planted the French race in America, and every characteristic then given "New France," as Canada was called, remains to-day in the Province of Quebec. His noted saying is preserved in the Canadian chronicles, that "the salvation of one soul is of more importance than the founding of a new empire." His system was to take possession for the Church and the French king, and then erect a cross and a chapel, around which the colony grew. During the half-century succeeding Champlain's first voyage, many Recollet and Jesuit missionary priests came over, traversing the country and making converts among the Indians, so that there were established settlements, half-religious and half-military, forming alliances with the neighboring Huron and Algonquin Indians, and ultimately waging the almost perpetual wars with their English and Iroquois foes to the southward. Champlain, in 1608, founded Quebec, where Cartier had previously discovered the Indian village of Stadacona, meaning the "narrowing of the river." Champlain also, in subsequent voyages, discovered Lakes Champlain, Ontario and Nipissing.

RELIGIOUS FOUNDATION OF MONTREAL.

The original settlement of Montreal was probably the most completely religious enterprise of the many early French colonizing expeditions to Canada. DauversiÈre, a tax-gatherer of Anjou, was a religious devotee whose constant scourging with small chains and other torments, including a belt with more than twelve hundred sharp points, filled his father confessor with admiration. One day while at his devotions, an inward voice commanded him to found a new order of hospital nuns, and establish at the island called Mont Real in Canada a hospital or Hotel-Dieu for these nuns to conduct. But Mont Real being a wilderness where the hospital would be without patients, the island must be colonized to supply them, and the pious tax-gatherer was sorely perplexed. There was in Paris a young priest, Jean Jacques Olier, who was zealous and devout, and signalized his piety by much self-mortification, and one day while praying in church he thought he heard a voice from Heaven saying he was destined to be a light to the Gentiles, and that he was to form a society of priests and establish them on the island called Mont Real, in Canada, for the propagation of the true Faith. The old writers solemnly aver that both these men were totally ignorant of each other and of Canadian geography, yet they suddenly found themselves possessed, they knew not how, of the most exact details concerning the island, its size, shape, soil, productions, climate and situation; and they subsequently saw apparitions of the Virgin and the Saviour encouraging them in the great work. DauversiÈre went to Paris seeking aid to carry out his task, and met Olier in a chateau in the suburbs; the two men, who never before had seen or heard of each other, became at once familiar, and under holy inspiration fondly embraced each other; the tax-gatherer received communion at the hands of the priest; and then for three hours they walked together in the park forming their plans. They determined, as the pious chronicler records it, to "plant the banner of Christ in an abode of desolation and a haunt of demons, and to this end a band of priests and women were to invade the wilderness and take post between the fangs of the Iroquois." They believed in the mystic number, three, and proposed to found three religious communities—one of secular priests to direct the colonists and convert the Indians, one of nuns to nurse the sick, and one of nuns to teach the Faith to all the children, white and red.

But money and men and women were necessary for the work. Soon, four others were found who had wealth, and the six formed the germ of the "Society of Notre Dame de Montreal," and among them seventy-five thousand livres were raised, equal to about as many dollars. They purchased the island, and their grant was confirmed by the king, and then they got together a colony of forty men, and needing a soldier-governor, Providence provided such a man in Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve, a devout and valiant gentleman who had kept his faith intact, notwithstanding long service among the heretics of Holland, and loving his profession of arms, wished to consecrate his sword to the Church. The interest of the women was awakened, and ultimately the Society was increased to about forty-five persons, chosen for their devotion and their wealth. Among the women who founded the new colony was Mademoiselle Jeanne Mance, who was about thirty-four years of age when the Society was organized, and to whom we are told that Christ had appeared in a vision at the early age of seven years, and at the same tender age her biographer says she had bound herself to God by a vow of perpetual chastity. Mlle. Mance, by the divine inspiration, was filled with a longing to go to Canada, and she went to the port of Rochelle seeking a vessel. She had never before heard of DauversiÈre, but by supernatural agencies she met him coming out of church, had a long conversation in which she learned his plan, declared she had found her destiny in "the ocean, the wilderness, the solitude, the Iroquois," and at once decided to go with Maisonneuve and his party.

In February, 1641, with the AbbÉ Olier at their head, all the associates of the Society assembled in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, in Paris, before the altar of the Virgin, and by a most solemn ceremonial consecrated Mont Real to the Holy Family. It was henceforth to be a sacred town, called "Ville Marie de Montreal," and consecrated respectively, the Seminary of priests to Christ, the Hotel-Dieu to St. Joseph, and the Nuns' College to the Virgin. Subsequently to the colonization there appeared, in 1653, as the head of the latter, a maiden of Troyes, Marguerite Bourgeoys, a woman of most excellent good sense and a warm heart, who is described as having known neither miracles, ecstasies nor trances, her religion being of the affections and manifested in an absorbing devotion to duty. Late in the year the colony under Maisonneuve set sail, arriving too late, however, to ascend the St. Lawrence above Quebec, where they wintered. Here the Governor of Quebec, Montmagny, tried his best to dissuade them from going farther, desiring them to settle at Quebec, but Maisonneuve said, "It is my duty and my honor to found a colony at Montreal, and I would go if every tree were an Iroquois!" Here they gained an unexpected recruit in Madame de la Peltrie, foundress of the Order of Ursulines at Quebec, who abandoned their convent and carried off all the furniture she had lent them. In May, 1642, the party left Quebec in a flotilla of boats, deep laden with men, arms and stores, and a few days later approached Montreal island, when all on board raised a hymn of praise. Montmagny, who was to deliver possession of the island, was with them, and also Father Vimont, Superior of the missions, for the Jesuits had been invited to take spiritual charge of the young colony. On May 18, 1642, they landed at Montreal, at a spot where a little creek then flowed into the St. Lawrence, making a good landing-place, protected from the influence of the swift current of the river. There was a bordering meadow, and beyond rose the forest with its vanguard of scattered trees. The triangular graystone building, which is now the Custom House, down by the river, marks this spot where the city was founded. The historian Parkman, who has so faithfully delved into the ancient Canadian archives, thus relates the story of the original settlement:

"Maisonneuve sprang ashore and fell on his knees. His followers imitated his example, and all joined their voices in enthusiastic songs of thanksgiving. Tents, baggage, arms and stores were landed. An altar was raised on a pleasant spot near at hand; and Mademoiselle Mance, with Madame de la Peltrie, aided by her servant Charlotte BarrÉ, decorated it with a taste which was the admiration of the beholders. Now all the company gathered before the shrine. Here stood Vimont in the rich vestments of his office. Here were the two ladies with their servant; Montmagny, no very willing spectator; and Maisonneuve, a warlike figure, erect and tall, his men clustering around him,—soldiers, sailors, artisans and laborers,—all alike soldiers at need. They kneeled in reverent silence as the Host was raised aloft; and when the rite was over the priest turned and addressed them: 'You are a grain of mustard-seed, that shall rise and grow till its branches overshadow the earth. You are few, but your work is the work of God. His smile is on you, and your children shall fill the land.' The afternoon waned; the sun sank behind the western forest, and twilight came on. Fireflies were twinkling over the darkened meadow. They caught them, tied them with threads into shining festoons, and hung them before the altar where the Host remained exposed. Then they pitched their tents, lighted their bivouac fires, stationed their guards, and lay down to rest. Such was the birth-night of Montreal." Thus was piously planted the "grain of mustard-seed" of the devout and enthusiastic Vimont, which has expanded into a great city of probably three hundred thousand people, over half of them French and more than three-fourths Catholics, there being also a large Irish population.

MONTREAL INSTITUTIONS.

Montreal covers a surface five miles long by two miles wide, and its situation gives it great commercial importance. The people call it "the Queen of the St. Lawrence," standing at the head of ship navigation, where cargoes are exchanged with the internal canal and lake navigation system, the Grand Trunk Railway and the Canadian Pacific Railway crossing the continent, and both also having many connections with the United States. In 1809, the "Accommodation," the second steamboat in America, was built in Montreal, and began running to Quebec. The lion of Montreal is the Victoria Tubular Bridge, which was formally opened by the Prince of Wales on his American visit in 1860. It was designed by Robert Stephenson and built by James Hodges at a cost of over $6,000,000. It is nearly ninety-two hundred feet long and stands upon twenty-six piers and abutments, the centre being about sixty feet above the summer level of the river, which flows beneath at the rate of seven miles an hour. Elaborate ice-fenders are on the up-stream side of the piers, there being an enormous ice-pressure when the spring freshets are running. It is the greatest bridge in the Dominion, and near it stands a huge boulder, marking the burial-place of the army of Irish emigrants who came over in 1847, sixty-five hundred dying at Montreal of ship-fever.

The Sulpician Order has always been the great educator of priests in all French-speaking peoples, and it was founded by the AbbÉ Olier. Carrying out his intention, the "Seminary of St. Sulpice" was opened in Montreal in 1647. This is now an enormous and prosperous religious establishment, holding large possessions in and around the city. The "Gentlemen of the Seminary," as the members of the Order of Sulpicians are called in Montreal, are the successors of the first owners of the island, and they conduct a large secular business as landlords. Down in the heart of the old city, at the Place d'Armes, they have an antique quadrangle, surrounding a quiet garden, which is the official headquarters, and was the location of their ancient house. The curious French-looking towers fronting the Seminary were at one time loop-holed for musketry, and were garrisoned, when necessary, to beat off Indian raids upon the infant settlement. In the western suburbs there is a broad domain, known as the "Priests' Farm," where are an elaborate mass of buildings, making their present noted foundation, the "Great Seminary" and Montreal College, the former for the education of priests and the latter for the general education of youth, the delicious surrounding gardens being regarded as the finest on the fertile island.

The "Hospital of the Hotel-Dieu de Ville Marie" is on the northeastern edge of the city, almost under the shadow of the mountain, and is one of the largest buildings in Canada, its dome rising one hundred and fifty feet over the spacious chapel. It was in this hospital, when first founded in a small way in 1647, that Mademoiselle Mance took up her abode. There are now over five hundred persons in the building, and it is conducted by eighty cloistered nuns, who never go outside the grounds. They are of the Order of St. Joseph, caring for the sick, the orphan, and the old and infirm. The "Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame," the "Black Nuns," as they are called, have their Mother House in Montreal, this being the teaching order founded by Marguerite Bourgeoys in 1653, she having then come out to Canada with Maisonneuve on his second voyage. "To this day," writes Parkman, "in crowded schoolrooms of Montreal and Quebec, fit monuments of her unobtrusive virtue, her successors instruct the children of the poor and embalm the pleasant memory of Marguerite Bourgeoys. In the martial figure of Maisonneuve, and the fair form of this gentle nun, we find the true heroes of Montreal." These "Black Nuns" conduct seventeen schools in the city, with over five thousand pupils. Their most extensive establishment is just out of town, on what are known as the "Monk Lands," and is called "Ville Marie." There are no less than six hundred nuns and novices in this order, and their pupils number twenty thousand in Canada and the United States.

Another important Montreal institution is the "General Hospital of the Grey Sisters," popularly known as the "Grey Nunnery," occupying an extensive array of stone buildings in the southwestern part of the city. This order was first founded in 1692, but languished for nearly a half century, when a pious Canadian lady took it up. Originally it cared for the aged and infirm, but in 1755 this lady, Madame de Youville, discovered the body of a murdered infant, where is now Foundling Street, then a stream of water, into which the child had been thrown, and this led her to extend the objects of the institution so as to embrace orphans and foundlings. This is the great foundling hospital of Montreal. The order has the revenues of large estates, and there are about four hundred nuns and novices, over half being detailed in a large number of establishments throughout Canada. Several hundred foundlings are received every year, and over five hundred patients are cared for in Montreal, mostly the aged and infirm. The daughter of Ethan Allen, of Vermont, was a nun of this order, dying in 1819. This nunnery has many visitors, who attend worship with the Sisters in the beautiful chapel, and then go through the hospital, where the poor are cared for both in the morning and the evening of life. The crowds of little French children, dressed in the curious clothing of past centuries, sing for their visitors, and then comically scramble for the small coins tossed among them, which, after doing duty as playthings for a brief time, find their way into the charity box.

Montreal is the headquarters in America of the well-known teaching order of the Christian Brothers. The Jesuits have St. Mary's College; and the Convent of the Sacred Heart and Hochelaga Convent, the Asylum of the Sisters of Providence and the Convent of the Good Shepherd are also prominent. The chief Protestant educational institution is McGill University, with a thousand students and seventy-five instructors, originally founded in 1821, through a bequest of $150,000, by James McGill, a native of Glasgow, who was one of the early successful merchants of Montreal. It has since been richly endowed, its properties being valued at over $1,000,000, and it has fine buildings and grounds near the mountain. Closely affiliated is the Presbyterian College of Montreal, devoted to the training of missionaries and clergymen, also provided with noble buildings. There is also a Wesleyan Theological College affiliated with McGill University. The peculiar religious conditions of Quebec Province have vested the educational management of the public schools in two Boards, one Protestant and the other Roman Catholic, separately governing each class of schools, and working in harmony under the Provincial Superintendent of Education, each Board having an office in Montreal.

MONTREAL CHURCHES AND BUILDINGS.

The Place d'Armes, down in the old part of the city, where is the original Seminary of St. Sulpice, is surrounded by famous structures. Here are the chief banks and insurance buildings and the head office of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The most noted of them is the Grecian-fronted Bank of Montreal, the largest financial institution in Canada, and believed, with the Canadian Pacific management, who are closely connected, to be the most potential force in the Dominion. Adjoining the old Seminary, and facing the square, is Montreal's most famous church—Notre Dame—its lofty front rising into the twin spires that overlook all the country round. Its pews seat ten thousand, and when crowded it accommodates fifteen thousand people. In one of the towers hangs "Le Gros Bourdon," the largest bell in America, called Jean Baptiste, and weighing nearly fifteen tons. The church is mediÆval Gothic, built of cut limestone, the spires rising two hundred and twenty-seven feet, and containing ten bells, making a chime upon which, on great occasions, tunes are played. The interior, like all the French Catholic churches, is brilliantly decorated, for the religious development is the same as that of France in the seventeenth century, everything contributing to the intensity of the devotion and the elaborateness of decoration and paraphernalia of the service. At High Mass, when crowded by worshippers, the choir filled with robed ecclesiastics officiating in the stately ceremonial, the effect is imposing. The original church of Notre Dame was built in 1671, a long, low structure with a high pitched roof. It was pulled down in 1824 and replaced by the present church, which was five years building, and is one of the largest churches in America, two hundred and fifty-five feet long. We are told that the architect, James O'Donnell, who is buried in the crypt, was a Protestant, but during the work became so impressed by his religious surroundings that he was converted to a Roman Catholic. The church is never closed, and at any time one can enter, and with the silent worshippers kneel at the shrine in a solemn stillness, in sharp contrast with the activity of the business quarter without. This remarkable contrast deeply impressed the ascetic Thoreau, whose boast was that he never attended church. "I soon found my way to the Church of Notre Dame," he writes. "I saw that it was of great size and signified something. Coming from the hurrahing mob and the rattling carriages, we pushed back the listed door of this church and found ourselves instantly in an atmosphere which might be sacred to thought and religion, if one had any. It was a great cave in the midst of a city, and what were the altars and the tinsel but the sparkling stalactites into which you entered in a moment, and where the still atmosphere and the sombre light disposed to serious and profitable thought? Such a cave at hand, which you can enter any day, is worth a thousand of our churches which are open only Sundays." When General Montgomery's American army captured Montreal in 1775, the square in front of Notre Dame was his parade-ground, and thus it got the name of Place d'Armes.

The greatest church of Montreal is the new Cathedral of St. James, popularly known as St. Peter's, as yet incomplete, designed to reproduce, on a scale of one-half the dimensions, the grand Basilica at Rome. It is three hundred and thirty-three feet long, the transepts two hundred and twenty-five feet wide, and the stone dome two hundred and fifty feet high, making it the largest church in Canada. Four huge stone piers, each thirty-six feet thick, and thirty-two Corinthian columns, support this grand dome. The outside walls, built of the universal gray limestone, are massive but rough, and the roof, on account of the heavy snows, is sloping, but otherwise it reproduces all the special features of St. Peter's at Rome, including the portico, to be surmounted by colossal statues of the Apostles. The interior is being decorated with brilliant paintings representing scenes in the life of St. James. It is located on Dominion Square, and the Bishop's Palace adjoins it. One of the remarkable churches, though small, is Notre Dame de Lourdes, built and adorned with the single idea of expressing in visible form the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, with the appearance of the Virgin to the maiden in the grotto at Lourdes. It is superbly decorated, and is the only church of the kind in America, being well described as "like an illuminated Missal, which to a Protestant has interest as a work of art, and to a Catholic has the superadded interest of a work of devotion." Adjoining the Jesuit St. Mary's College is their solid stone Church of the Gesu, its lofty nave bounded by rich columns, and with the long transepts adorned by fine frescoes, some giving representations of scenes in Jesuit history and martyrdom. The great Episcopal Cathedral of Christ Church, a Latin cross in Early English architecture, reproduces the Salisbury Cathedral of England, with a spire two hundred and twenty-four feet high. There are also many other fine Protestant churches; and when it is realized that Montreal has a church for about every two thousand inhabitants, the care for its religious welfare will be realized. The Royal Victoria Hospital, a gift to the city in honor of the Queen's Jubilee, cost $1,000,000.

The largest public square in the city is the Champ de Mars, formerly a parade-ground, adjoining which are two noble public buildings, the handsome Court-house, three hundred feet long, and the adjacent Hotel de Ville, nearly five hundred feet long. The Victoria Skating Rink, the largest in the world, is the most noted amusement structure. The city is noted for athletic sports, and toboggan slides abound, some of enormous length, down the mountain slopes. The Montreal Bonsecours Market is famed everywhere, and presents an imposing Doric front nearly five hundred feet long upon the river bank, surmounted by a domed tower. Here gather in force the French Canadian peasantry, known as the habitans, to sell their produce and wares, and it gives a quaint exhibition of old-time French customs. The ancient Church of Notre Dame de Bonsecours is alongside, originally founded by Marguerite Bourgeoys in 1673 for the reception of a miraculous statue of the Virgin, entrusted to her by one of the associates of the Society founding Montreal, Baron de Faucamp. The church was burnt and then rebuilt in 1771, and is a quaint structure of a style rarely seen outside of Normandy, having shops built up against it after the fashion common in old European towns. Thus does this famous city combine the methods and styles of the Middle Ages with the manners and enterprises of to-day. It is an impressive fact that notwithstanding the prodigious religious development, all the denominations get on without friction. There is an underlying spirit of toleration, and it is recorded that after the British conquest of Canada the Protestants who came into Montreal occupied one of the Catholic churches for worship, assembling after the Catholic morning mass; and that for twenty years after 1766 the Church of England people occupied the Catholic church of the Recollets every Sunday afternoon. The Presbyterians are said to have also used the same church prior to 1792, and then having removed into a church of their own, they presented the priests of the Recollet church a gift of candles for the high altar and of wine for the mass as a token of good will and their thanks for the gratuitous use of the church. Then the churches were few, but now all denominations have their own, and numerously.

MONTREAL SURROUNDINGS.

The suburbs are attractive, and gradually dissolve into the gardens and farms of the French husbandmen, living in comfortable houses with steep roofs, fronted by and sometimes almost embedded in foliage and flowers. Occasionally an ancient windmill is perched on a hill, stretching out its broad gyrating sails, as in old Normandy. There are frequent villages along the St. Lawrence, each clustered around its church. At Caughnawaga, already referred to, there is an extensive church with a tall and shining white tin-covered spire, and in a rather sorry-looking group of houses around it live the few who are left of the descendants of the once warlike and powerful Mohawks, known as the "praying Indians," here long ago gathered by the zealous missionary priests of St. Sulpice. At Lachine, spreading opposite on the western shore of the St. Lawrence for several miles, is a popular place of suburban residence, with rows of pleasant villas lining the banks of Lake St. Louis. Over beyond this lake comes in the main channel of Ottawa River, with the rapids of St. Anne flowing down from another inland sea made by its prolonged enlargement, the "Lake of the Two Mountains." A canal flanks these rapids, and the village of St. Anne has grown around its ancient church, which is deeply reverenced by the Canadian boatmen and voyageurs on these waters as their special shrine, for in the early days all the fur-trading with the great Canadian northwest was by canoes and bateaux on the Ottawa and Lake Nipissing, and thence by portage to Lake Huron. Here came many years ago, on a bateau down the St. Lawrence, the minstrel bard, Tom Moore, and inspired by the locality, he composed in a cottage, still pointed out, his noted "Canadian Boat Song":

"Faintly as tolls the evening chime,

Our voices keep tune, and our oars keep time.

Soon as the woods on shore look dim,

We'll sing at St. Anne's our parting hymn.

Row, brothers, row; the stream runs fast,

The rapids are near, and the daylight's past.

On the northern shore of the "Lake of the Two Mountains," with Oka village nestling at the base, where an Indian colony live, are the two mountains from which the lake is named. One, surmounted by a cross, is Mount Calvary, having various religious shrines on its summit, and seven chapels on the road up, representing the seven stations of the cross. Here is also a monastery of the French "farmer Monks," the Trappists, who cultivate a large surface. They live a secluded life under ascetic rules, are not allowed to talk to each other, and only men enter the monastery, all women being stopped at the threshold. They rise at two o'clock in the morning, take breakfast soon afterwards in absolute silence, this being the only meal of the day, and retire to rest immediately after prayers at sunset. They devote twelve hours daily to devotions, and labor in the fields the remainder of the waking time. Their food is a scant allowance of water and vegetables. They sleep on a board with a straw pillow, and never undress, even in sickness. They are a branch of the Cistercians, and their abode overlooks the placid lake, with Montreal spreading beyond. But the city's finest suburban possession is its Mountain, the summit being a pleasant park, and the slopes covered with luxuriant foliage, which in the autumn becomes a blazing mass of resplendent beauty when the frosts turn the leaves. From the top the view is of unrivalled magnificence.

THE GRAND RIVER.

The Ottawa River is the most important tributary of the St. Lawrence, over seven hundred miles long, and draining a basin of one hundred thousand square miles, the most productive pine-timber region existing. It was the "Grand River" of the early French-Canadian voyageurs, and the name of Ottawa, changed considerably from the original form, comes from the Indian tribe and means "the traders." It has a circuitous course; rising in Western Quebec province, it flows northwest and then west for three hundred miles to Lake Temiscamingue, on the border of Ontario province; then it turns and flows back southeastward, making the boundary between the provinces for four hundred miles, until it falls into the St. Lawrence, the vast volume of its dark waters pressing the latter's blue current against the farther shore. It is a romantic river, filled with rapids and cascades, at times broadening into lakes, and again contracted into a torrent barely fifty yards wide, where the waters are precipitated over the rocks in wild splendor. For twenty-five miles above its mouth it broadens into the "Lake of the Two Mountains," from one to six miles wide. Above the city of Ottawa there are rapids terminating in the famous ChaudiÈre Falls, where the waters plunge down forty feet, and part are said to disappear through an underground passage of unknown outlet. It has an enormous lumber trade, and by a canal system, avoiding the rapids, has been made navigable for two hundred and fifty miles. The Rideau River enters from the south at Ottawa, making the route by which the Rideau Canal goes over to Lake Ontario at Kingston. The Gatineau River also flows in at Ottawa, being of great volume, over four hundred miles long, and a prolific timber producer. In the villages around Montreal all the saints in the calendar are named, so that, starting on an exploration of Ottawa River, the route goes by St. Martin, St. Jean, St. Rose, St. Therese, St. Jerome, St. Lin, St. Eustache, St. Augustine, St. Scholastique, St. Hermes, St. Phillippe, and many more. But when the great religious city is left behind the saints cease to appear, and everything in the Ottawa valley above is generally otherwise named. This valley is usually a broad and level intervale, with only an occasional rocky buttress pressing upon the river. At one of these passes, in 1660, a handful of valiant men held the stockade at Carillon, the foot of Long Sault rapids, sacrificing their lives to save the early colony from the Indians, the place being known as the "French Canadian ThermopylÆ." The full force of the Iroquois warriors were in arms up the Ottawa, over a thousand of them, threatening to drive the French out of Montreal. Dollard des Ormeaux and sixteen companions took the sacrament in the little Montreal church, made their wills, and bound themselves by an oath neither to give nor take quarter. A few Algonquins joined them, and going up the river they hastily built a stockaded fort at this pass. Soon the Iroquois canoes came dancing down the rapids, and discovering the fort, they surrounded and attacked it, but were repulsed day after day, until every one of the brave garrison had been killed, when the Iroquois had lost so many of their own warriors that they tired of the fighting, and avoiding Montreal, returned southward to their own country. Some fugitive Indians told the heroic story, which George Murray has woven into his ballad:

Some distance above, at the Chateau Montebello, lived in the early nineteenth century Louis Joseph Papineau, the "French-Canadian O'Connell," the seigneur of the district, who was the local leader in resistance to English aggressions, of whom the French are very proud, and his portrait hangs in the Parliament House at Ottawa. He was defeated, banished and then pardoned, and lived here to a ripe old age to see many of the reforms and privileges for which he had contended fully realized under subsequent administrations. The Riviere aux LiÈvres rushes into the Ottawa down a turbulent cascade, through which logs dash until caught in the booms at the sawmills below, where are vast lumber piles. This river is two hundred and eighty miles long, and just above its mouth has a fall at Buckingham of seventy feet, giving an enormous water-power. The whole region hereabout is devoted to lumbering. The French habitan from Lower Quebec comes up into this wilderness of woods with scarcely any capital but his axe, in the use of which he is expert. These Canadians do not like leaving their homes, but are compelled by sheer necessity. When the old Quebec farm has been subdivided among the children, under the French system, until the long, ribbon-like strips of land become so narrow between the fences that there is no opportunity for further sub-division, the young men must seek a livelihood elsewhere. The old man gives them a blessing, with a good axe and two or three dollars, and they start for the lumber camps. They catch abundant fish, can live on almost nothing, and need only buy their flour and salt, with some pork for a luxury. These lumbermen often wear picturesque costumes like the old voyageurs, and they like flaming red scarfs. They are as polite as the most courtly French gentleman, and pass their evenings in dancing, with music and singing the ancient songs of their forefathers, scorning anything modern. Many of them are Metis, or half-breeds, the descendants of French and Indians. These are more heavy featured and not so sprightly as the pure French, but they are equally skillful woodmen, and have inherited many good traits from both races, though they rather regard with pity their full-blooded Indian half-brothers, whose lot is scarcely as favorable. All these people are devout Catholics, and going up into the woods in the late autumn and remaining until after Easter, the priests always visit their camps to attend to their spiritual wants. An impressive scene in these vast forests in the dawn of a cold winter morning is to see the priest standing with outstretched arms at the rude altar, the light of the candles revealing the earnest faces of his flock as they reverentially attend the mass. These woodmen are firm believers in the supernatural, convinced that the spirits of the dead come back in various shapes. If a single crow is seen they are sure a calamity has occurred; if two crows fly before them it means a wedding. An owl hooting indicates impending danger. They are always hearing strange voices at night, or seeing ominous shapes in the twilight wood shadows. The Metis are good hunters, and great is their joy when a belated bear is found near the camp, or a deer or moose is tracked in the snow. Their lumbering is done near the streams, so the logs may be thrown in and floated down by the spring freshets. They make a vast product of timber, sold throughout the lakes and St. Lawrence region, much going across the Atlantic.

THE DOMINION CAPITAL.

The earliest settler at the portage around the ChaudiÈre Falls of the Ottawa was Philemon Wright, of Woburn, Massachusetts, who came along in 1800, and not getting on successfully, sold out about twenty years later to cancel a debt of $200. Subsequently there was established at the confluence of the three rivers, Ottawa, Rideau and Gatineau, by Colonel By, a British military post and Indian trading-station, around which in time a settlement grew which was called Bytown, distant about a hundred miles from the St. Lawrence River. It was incorporated a city in 1854 by the name of Ottawa; and when the Dominion Confederation was formed in 1858 there was so much contention about the claims of rival cities to be the capital—Montreal, Toronto, Kingston and Quebec all being urged—that Queen Victoria, to finally settle the matter, selected Ottawa. There is a population of about sixty thousand, but excepting from the noble location of the magnificent public buildings, the political importance of the city does not attract the visitor so much as the business development. The lumber trade makes the first and greatest impression; landing among boards and sawdust, walking amid timber piles and over wooden sidewalks, with slabs, blocks and planks everywhere in endless profusion, the rushing waters filled with floating logs and sawdust, busy saws running, planing-machines screeching, the canals carrying lumber cargoes, the rivers lined with acres of board piles—an idea is got of what the lumber trade of the Ottawa valley is. The timber is almost all white and yellow pine. Alongside the ChaudiÈre Falls at the western verge of the town are clustered the great sawmills, while capacious slides shoot the logs down, which are to be floated farther along to the St. Lawrence. There are also large flour-mills and other factories getting power from this cataract.

The ChaudiÈre, or the "Cauldron," is a remarkable cataract, and the Indians were so terrified by it, that to propitiate its evil genius we are told they usually threw in a little tobacco before traversing the portage around it. The rapids begin about six miles above, terminating in this great boiling cauldron with a sheer descent of forty feet, which is as curious as it is grand. Owing to the peculiar formation of the enclosing rocks, all the waters of the broad river are converged into a sort of basin about two hundred feet wide, plunging in with vast commotion and showers of spray. Efforts have been made to sound this strange cauldron, but the lead has not found bottom at three hundred feet depth. The narrowness of the passage between the enclosing rocky walls, just below the falls, has enabled a bridge to be built across, connecting Ottawa with the suburb of Hull. Here is given an admirable view of the foaming, descending waters, clouds of spray, and at times gorgeous rainbows, flanked by timber piles and sawmills, sending out rushing streams of water and sawdust into the river below. Near by a chain of eight massive locks brings the Rideau Canal down through a fissure in the high bank to the level of the lower Ottawa, its sides being almost perpendicularly cut by the action of water in past ages. The locks are a Government work, of solid masonry, well built, and the fissure divides Ottawa into the Upper and the Lower Town, pretty bridges being thrown across it on the lines of the principal streets. The Rideau Canal follows the Rideau River upwards southwest to the Lake Ontario level, and in the whole distance of one hundred and twenty-six miles to Kingston, overcomes four hundred and forty-six feet by forty-seven locks. Much of the suburb of Hull and a considerable part of Ottawa, with enormous amounts of lumber, were destroyed by a great fire in April, 1900, a high wind fanning the flames that were spread by the inflammable materials.

Upon Barrack Hill, at an elevation of one hundred and fifty feet, surrounded by ornamental grounds, and having the Ottawa River flowing at the western base, stand the Government buildings. They are magnificent structures, costing nearly $4,000,000, the Prince of Wales having laid the corner-stone on his visit in 1860. They are built of cream-colored sandstone, with red sandstone and Ohio stone trimmings, the architecture being Italian Gothic, and they stand upon three sides of a grass-covered quadrangle, and occupy an area of four acres. They include the Parliament House, the chief building, and all the Dominion Government offices. The former is four hundred and seventy-two feet long, the other buildings on the east and west sides of the quadrangle being somewhat smaller. All are impressive, their great elevation enabling their towers and spires to be seen for many miles. The legislative chambers are richly furnished, and Queen Victoria's portrait is on the walls of one House, and those of King George III. and Queen Charlotte upon the other. The Parliamentary Library, a handsome polygonal structure of sixteen angles, adjoins. The Governor-General resides in Rideau Hall, across the Rideau River. From a little pavilion out upon the western edge of Barrack Hill, high above the Ottawa, there is a long view over the western and northern country, whence that river comes. To the left is the rolling land of Ontario province, and to the right the distant hills and looming blue mountains of Quebec, the river dividing them. Behind the pavilion is the stately Parliament House, its noble Victoria Tower, seen from afar, rising two hundred and twenty feet.

MONTREAL TO QUEBEC.

The broad St. Lawrence River flows one hundred and eighty miles from Montreal to Quebec. A succession of parishes is passed, each with its lofty church and presbytÈre, reproducing the picturesque buildings of old Normandy and Brittany, with narrow windows and steep roofs, all covered with shining white tin which the dry air preserves. Little villages cluster around the churches, with long stretches of arable lands between. Among a mass of wooded islands on the northern bank, the turbid waters of the lower Ottawa outlet flow in, the edge of the clearer blue of the St. Lawrence being seen for some distance below. The delta makes green alluvial islands and shoals. Thus we sail down the great river, past shores that were long ago very well settled.

In the eighteenth century, Kalm, a Swedish tourist in America, said it could be really called a village, beginning at Montreal and ending at Quebec, "for the farmhouses are never more than five arpents apart, and sometimes but three asunder, a few places excepted;" and two centuries ago a traveller on the river wrote that the houses "were never more than a gunshot apart." All the people are French, retaining the language and old customs, simple-minded and primitive, the same as under the ancient French rÉgime, and excepting that one village, Varennes, has put two towers upon its stately church, all of them are exactly alike. It is recorded that in Champlain's time some Huguenot sailors came up the river piously singing psalm tunes. This did not please the officials, and soon a boat with soldiers put off from one of these villages, and the officer in charge told them that "Monseigneur, the Viceroy, did not wish that they should sing psalms on the great river." The first steamer that came along the St. Lawrence created unlimited dread, horrifying the villagers. Solemnly crossing himself, an old voyageur, who probably thought his trade on the waters endangered, exclaimed, in his astonishment, "But can you believe that the good God will permit all that?"

The Richelieu River, the outlet of Lake Champlain, comes in at Sorel, the chief affluent on the southern bank, its canal system making a navigable connection with the Hudson River. Cardinal Richelieu took great interest in early Canadian colonization, and Fort Richelieu was built at the mouth of this river, being afterwards enlarged to prevent Iroquois forays, by Captain Sorel, whose name is preserved in the town. Below, there is an archipelago of low alluvial islands, and the St. Lawrence broadens out into Lake St. Peter, nine or ten miles wide, and generally shallow, this being the head of the tidal influence. On its southern side flows in the St. Francis River, the outlet of Lake Memphremagog and of many streams and lakes in the vast wilderness along the boundary north of Vermont and east of Lake Champlain. At its mouth is the little village of St. FranÇois du Lac. As the shores contract below Lake St. Peter, the town of Three Rivers is passed midway between Montreal and Quebec. Here the fine river St. Maurice, another great lumber-producing stream, flows in upon the northern bank, two little islands dividing its mouth into a delta of three channels, thus naming the town. The St. Maurice is full of rapids and cataracts, the chief being Shawanagan Fall, about twenty miles inland, noted for its grandeur and remarkable character. The river, suddenly bending and divided into two streams by a pile of rocks, falls nearly one hundred and fifty feet and dashes against an opposing wall, where the reunited stream forces its way through a narrow passage scarcely a hundred feet wide. The two lofty rocks bounding this abyss are called La Grande Mere and Le Bon Homme. The headwaters of St. Maurice interlock with some of those of the gloomy Saguenay north of Quebec. An enormous output of lumber comes down to Three Rivers, and the district also produces much bog iron ore. Here are extensive sawmills, iron-works, and one of the largest paper-pulp establishments in America, the unrivalled water-power being thus utilized. Below the St. Maurice, as the outcropping foothills from the Laurentian Mountains approach the river, the scenery becomes more picturesque. The Richelieu rapids are here, requiring careful navigation among the rocks, and Jacques Cartier River comes in from the north. In front of St. Augustin village, years ago, the steamer "Montreal" was burnt with a loss of two hundred lives, and on the outskirts is an ancient ruined church, which is said to have fallen in decay because the devil assisted at its building. This was in 1720, and the tradition is that His Satanic Majesty appeared in the form of a powerful black stallion, who hauled the blocks of stone, until his driver, halting at a watering-trough, where there was also a small receptacle of holy water for the faithful, unbridled the horse, who became suddenly restive and vanished in a cloud of sulphurous smoke. Many pious pilgrimages are made to the present fine church of the village, having a statue of the guardian angel standing out in front, commemorating the Vatican Council of 1870. As Quebec is approached, the "coves" are seen on the northern shore, arranged with booms for the timber ships, for easier transfer of lumber from the rafts floated down the river, and the steep bluffs behind run off into Cape Diamond, projecting far across the stream. Old Sillery Church stands up with its tall spire atop of the bold bluff, with a monastery behind it. Here Noel Brulart de Sillery, Knight of Malta, in 1637, established one of the early Jesuit missions. Point Levis stretches from the southern bank to narrow the river channel. The low gray walls of the citadel surmount the highest point of the extremity of Cape Diamond, and rounding it, we are at Quebec.

ORIGIN OF QUEBEC.

Whence comes the name of Quebec? "Quel bec! Quel bec!"—(What a beak!)—shouted Jacques Cartier's astonished sailors, when, sailing up the St. Lawrence, they first beheld the startling promontory of Cape Diamond, thrust in towering majesty almost across the river. Thus, says one tradition, by a natural elision, was named Quebec, when the Europeans first saw the rock in 1535. Another derivation comes from Candebec on the Seine, which it much resembles. The Indian word "Kebic," meaning "the fearful rocky cliff," may have been its origin. The Indian village of Stadacona was here when Cartier found it, a cluster of wigwams fringing the shore in front of the bold cliff, its people bearing allegiance to the Montaignais chief, Donnacona. Here the ancient chronicle records that Cartier saw a "mighty promontory, rugged and bare, thrust its scarped front into the raging current," and he planted the cross and lilies of France and took possession for his king. Returning to Europe, he took back as prisoners the chief, Donnacona, and several of his warriors, their arrival making a great sensation. They were fÊted and prayed for, and becoming converted, were baptised with pomp in the presence of a vast assemblage in the magnificent Cathedral of Rouen. But the round of pleasure and feasting, with the excess of excitement, overcame these children of the forest, and they all died within a year. Colonization on the St. Lawrence, after Cartier's voyages, languished for seventy years, various ill-starred expeditions failing, and it was not until 1608 that the city of Quebec was really founded by Samuel de Champlain, who was sent out by a company of associated noblemen of France to establish a fur trade with the Indians and open a new field for the Church, the Roman Catholic religion being then in the full tide of enthusiasm which in the seventeenth century made what was known as the "counter reformation." Champlain built a fort and established the province of New France, but his colony was of slow growth. There subsequently came out the military and commercial adventurers and religious enthusiasts, who were the first settlers of the new empire. The Recollet Fathers came in 1615, and the Jesuit missionary priests in 1625 and subsequently. The famous Canadian bishop, Laval de Montmorency, Father Hennepin, and the Sieur de la Salle, all came out in the same ship at a later period. Thus was founded the great French Catholic power in North America.

The Church thoroughly ruled the infant colony of Quebec. In the fort, black-garbed Jesuits and scarfed officers mingled at Champlain's table. Parkman says, "There was little conversation, but in its place, histories and the lives of saints were read aloud, as in a monastic refectory; prayers, masses and confessions followed each other with an edifying regularity, and the bell of the adjacent chapel, built by Champlain, rang morning, noon, and night; godless soldiers caught the infection, and whipped themselves in penance for their sins; debauched artisans outdid each other in the fury of their contrition; Quebec was become a mission." Champlain died at Christmas, 1635, after a long illness, at the age of sixty-eight, the "Father of Canada," and Quebec was without a Governor for a half-year. Finally, the next summer, the Father Superior, Le Jeune, who had been directing affairs, espied a ship, and going down to the landing, was met by the new Governor, de Montmagny, a Knight of Malta, with a long train of officers and gentlemen. We are told that "as they all climbed the rock together, Montmagny saw a crucifix planted by the path. He instantly fell on his knees before it; and nobles, soldiers, sailors and priests imitated his example. The Jesuits sang Te Deum at the church, and the cannon roared from the adjacent fort. Here the new Governor was scarcely installed, when a Jesuit came in to ask if he would be godfather to an Indian about to be baptized. 'Most gladly,' replied the pious Montmagny. He repaired on the instant to the convert's hut, with a company of gaily-apparelled gentlemen; and while the inmates stared in amazement at the scarlet and embroidery, he bestowed on the dying savage the name of Joseph, in honor of the spouse of the Virgin and the patron of New France. Three days after, he was told that a dead proselyte was to be buried, on which, leaving the lines of the new fortification he was tracing, he took in hand a torch, De Lisle, his lieutenant, took another, Repentigny and St. Jean, gentlemen of his suite, with a band of soldiers, followed, two priests bore the corpse, and thus all moved together in procession to the place of burial. The Jesuits were comforted. Champlain himself had not displayed a zeal so edifying." The spiritual power thus so zealously exerted thoroughly controlled Quebec, and its masterful force always continued.

THE FRENCH-CANADIAN MISSIONARIES.

Boundless was the power exerted when the religious envoys of this wonderful colony spread over the interior of America. When the heroic bishop Laval de Montmorency stood on the altar-steps of his Basilica at Quebec, he could wave his crozier over half a continent, from the island of St. Pierre Miquelon to the source of the Mississippi, and from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. The Jesuits' College at Quebec was started in a small way as early as 1637, and from it, year after year, issued forth the dauntless missionaries, carrying the gospel out among the Indians for over three thousand miles into the interior, preaching the faith beyond the Mississippi, and down its valley, throughout Louisiana, many suffering death and martyrdom in its most cruel forms. Nowhere in the church annals exists a grander chapter than the record of these missionaries. Unarmed and alone, they travelled the unexplored continent, bravely meeting every horrible torture and lingering death inflicted by the vindictive savages, whom they went out to bless. The world was amazed at their sufferings and achievements. Even Puritan New England, we are told, received their envoy with honors, the apostle Eliot entertaining him at Roxbury parsonage, while Boston, Salem and Plymouth became his gracious hosts. These devoted men loved the new country. "To the Jesuits," we are told in their annals, "the atmosphere of Quebec was well-nigh celestial. In the climate of New France one learns perfectly to seek only one God; to have no desire but God; no purpose but for God. To live in New France is in truth to live in the bosom of God. If anyone of those who die in this country goes to perdition," writes Le Jeune, "I think he will be doubly guilty." For years old France sent over a multitude to reinforce these missions. They were urged on by rank, wealth and power in the great work of converting the heathen, and the noblest motives gave these missions life. Solitude, toil, privation, hardship and death were the early French missionary's portion, yet nothing made his zeal or courage flag. The saints and angels of their faith hovered around these Jesuit martyrs with crowns of glory and garlands of immortal bliss. It was no wonder that the French and Jesuit influence soon extended far beyond the mere circle of converts. It modified and softened the rude manners of many unconverted tribes. Parkman, from whom I have already quoted, records that "in the wars of the next century we do not often find those examples of diabolic atrocity with which the earlier annals are crowded. The savage burned his enemies alive, it is true, but he seldom ate them; neither did he torment them with the same deliberation and persistency. He was a savage still, but not so often a devil."

The French missionary priests survived the period of torture and trial, and became, in fact, the revered rulers of many of the Indian tribes. They thoroughly assimilated and learned the languages. The priest, regarded with awe and affection, knew so much, and was so skillful as counsellor and physician, that the untutored savage came to look upon him almost as a supernatural being. The biographer of the venerable Father Davion, who governed the Yazoos in Louisiana, tells how the Indians regarded him as more than human. "Had they not, they said, frequently seen him at night, with his dark solemn gown, not walking, but gliding through the woods like something spiritual? How could one so weak in frame, and using so little food, stand so many fatigues? How was it that whenever one of them fell sick, however distant it might be, Father Davion knew it instantly and was sure to be there before sought for? Did any of his prophecies ever prove false? What was it he was in the habit of muttering so long, when counting the beads of that mysterious chain that hung round his neck? Was he not then telling the Great Spirit every wrong they had done? So they both loved and feared Father Davion. One day they found him dead at the foot of the altar; he was leaning against it with his head cast back, with his hands clasped, and still retaining his kneeling position. There was an expression of rapture in his face, as if to his sight the gates of Paradise had suddenly unfolded themselves to give him admittance; it was evident that his soul had exhaled into a prayer, the last on this earth, but terminating no doubt in a hymn of rejoicing above." But great as may be the spectacle of triumphant martyrdom, there are yet men unwilling to change places with the missionary priest. Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in The Problem:

But others also came to New France besides priests and martyrs; the adventurers and beggared noblemen—poor, uneducated, yet bold and courageous. The historian tells us of "the beggared noble of the early time" who came over, "never forgetting his quality of gentilhomme; scrupulously wearing its badge the sword, and copying, as well as he could, the fashions of the court which glowed on his vision across the sea with all the effulgence of Versailles and beamed with reflected ray from the Chateau of Quebec. He was at home among his tenants, at home among the Indians, and never more at home than when, a gun in his hand and a crucifix on his breast, he took the warpath with a crew of painted savages and Frenchmen almost as wild, and pounced like a lynx from the forest on some lonely farm or outlying hamlet of New England. How New England hated him, let her records tell. The reddest blood-streaks on her old annals mark the track of the Canadian gentilhomme."

QUAINT OLD QUEBEC.

Thus created a thoroughly French region, Lower Canada still maintains the religious character of the original colony. The geographical names are mostly those of the saints and fathers of the Church, and much of the land is owned by religious bodies. The population is four-fifths French, and nowhere does the Church to-day show more vitality or command more thorough devotion. The city of Quebec almost stands still in population, having about seventy thousand, of whom five-sixths are French. It is now just as Champlain made it, though larger, a fortress, trading-station and church combined, and quaintly attractive in all three phases. No finer location could have been selected for a town and seaport, and no more impregnable position found to guard the St. Lawrence passage than its junction with the river St. Charles. An elevated tongue of land stretches along the northwestern bank of the St. Lawrence for several miles, and from behind it comes out the St. Charles. Below their junction the broad Isle of Orleans blocks the way, dividing the St. Lawrence into two channels, while above, the noble river contracts to the "Narrows," less than a mile in width, making a strait guarded all along by bold shores. At the northern extremity of this tongue of land, and opposite the "Narrows" of the river, rises the lofty cliff of Cape Diamond, three hundred and fifty feet above the water, the citadel crowning the hill and overlooking the town nestling at its foot. The fortifications spread all around the cliff and its approaches, completely guarding the rivers and the means of access by land; but it is now all peaceful, being only a show-place for sight-seers. As may be imagined, this grand fortress is magnificent to look at from the water approach, while the outlook from the ramparts and terraces on top of the cliff is one of the finest sights over town and rivers, hills and woods, in the world.

Quebec is quaint, ancient and picturesque, presenting strange contrasts. A fortress and commercial mart have been built together on the summit of a rock, like an eagle's nest. It is a French city in America, ruled by the English, and was held mainly by Scotch and Irish troops; a town with the institutions of the middle ages under modern constitutional government, having torrid summers and polar winters, and a range of the thermometer from thirty degrees below zero to one hundred degrees above. When Charles Dilke came here he thought he was back in the European Middle Ages. He found "gates and posterns, cranky steps that lead up to lofty gabled houses with steep French roofs of burnished tin like those of LiÉge; processions of the Host; altars decked with flowers; statues of the Virgin; sabots and blouses; and the scarlet of the British linesmen. All these are seen in narrow streets and markets that are graced with many a Cotentin lace cap, and all within forty miles of the Down East Yankee State of Maine. It is not far from New England to Old France. There has been no dying out of the race among the French Canadians. The American soil has left their physical type, religion, language and laws absolutely untouched. They herd together in their rambling villages; dance to the fiddle after mass on Sundays as gaily as once did their Norman sires; and keep up the fleur de lys and the memory of Montcalm. More French than the French are the Lower Canada habitans. The pulse-beat of the Continent finds no echo here." Henry Ward Beecher thought Quebec the most curious city he had ever seen, saying, "It is a peak thickly populated, a gigantic rock, escarped, echeloned, and at the same time smoothed off to hold firmly on its summit the houses and castles, although, according to the ordinary laws of nature, they ought to fall off, like a burden placed on a camel's back without a fastening. Yet the houses and castles hold there as if they were nailed down. At the foot of the rock some feet of land have been reclaimed from the river, and that is for the streets of the Lower Town. Quebec is a dried shred of the Middle Ages hung high up near the North Pole, far from the beaten paths of the European tourists—a curiosity without parallel on this side of the ocean. The locality ought to be scrupulously preserved antique. Let modern progress be carried elsewhere. When Quebec has taken the pains to go and perch herself away up near Hudson's Bay, it would be cruel and unfitting to dare to harass her with new ideas, and to speak of doing away with the narrow and tortuous streets that charm all travellers in order to seek conformity with the fantastic ideas of comfort in vogue in the nineteenth century."

THE FORTRESS OF QUEBEC.

Up on the cliff, in 1620, Champlain built the ancient castle of St. Louis, which stood on the verge of the rock, where now is the eastern end of the Dufferin Terrace, at an elevation of about one hundred and eighty feet above the river. This was of timber, afterwards replaced by a stone structure used for fort and prison, and burnt in the early part of the nineteenth century, the site being now an open square, with some relics, on the verge of the cliff. The great Quebec Citadel upon the summit of the promontory, three hundred and fifty feet above the river, is one of the most formidable of the former systems of stone fortifications. It covers forty acres, and has outlying walls, batteries and defensive works enclosing the entire ancient city, the circuit being nearly three miles. There are batteries guarding the water approach, gates on the landward side (some now dismantled), and four massive martello towers on the edge of the Plains of Abraham above the city, with long subterranean passages leading to them and other outlying works. The Quebec rock is a dark slate, with an almost perpendicular stratification, and shining quartz crystals found in it gave it the name of Cape Diamond. The portion of the works overlooking the St. Lawrence is called the Grand Battery, while the surmounting pinnacle of the Citadel, containing a huge Armstrong gun, is the King's Bastion. While Quebec's magnificent scenery and its tremendous rock-crowned fortress remain as they were during the great colonial wars, yet the military glory is gone. England long ago withdrew the regular garrison, and only a handful of Canadian militia now hold the place, and the guns are harmless from age and rust, only two or three smaller ones doing the present ceremonious duties. In fact the old rock is so given to sliding, that salutes are forbidden, excepting on rare occasions, lest the concussion may bring some of the fatal rock-slides down upon the people of the Lower Town. There is a little bronze gun preserved as a trophy in the centre of the Parade, which the British captured at Bunker Hill. Grand as this Citadel is, it no longer protects Quebec, for in fact the defense against an enemy is provided by the newer modern forts across the river behind Point Levis, which command the river approach and cost some $15,000,000 to construct.

Yet great has been the conflict around this noted rock fortress in the past. The earliest battles were at the old Castle of St. Louis, and after the repulse of the New England colonial expeditions sent against Quebec in 1711 it was determined to fortify the whole of Cape Diamond, and then the Citadel and chief works were built. Two monuments, however, record the greatest events in its history. The Wolfe-Montcalm monument is the chief, erected just behind the Dufferin Terrace, in a little green enclosure known as the "Governor's Garden," recording the result of the greatest battle fought in Colonial America, the fateful contest in 1759, on the Plains of Abraham, where both commanders fell, which changed the sovereignty of Canada from France to England, and the crowning victory of the "Seven Years' War," which Parkman says "began the history of the United States." This is a plain shaft, almost without ornamentation, and bears the names of both Generals. The other monument is the little stone set up in the face of the cliff on the river-front below the citadel, marking where the American General Montgomery fell, in the winter of 1775. He had crossed the St. Lawrence on the ice, and in imitation of Wolfe's previous exploit, rashly tried to scale the almost perpendicular cliff with a handful of troops, but was defeated and slain. Wolfe's successful ascent of the bluff in 1759 had been made from the river three miles above Quebec, at what is now known as Wolfe's Cove, where the timber ships load. A little stream makes a ravine in the bank, and Wolfe and his intrepid followers, having floated down from above with the tide, landed and climbed through this gorge, the route they took being at present a steep road ascending the face of the bluff among the trees, a small flag-staff being planted at the top. The Plains of Abraham—so called from Abraham Martin, a pilot living there—are now occupied by the modern residences of the city and the massive buildings of the Quebec Provincial Parliament. There is also a prison, and near it a monument marking where Wolfe fell, being the second column erected, the first having been carried away piecemeal by relic-hunters. Upon it is the inscription: "Here died Wolfe victorious, Sept. 13, 1759." This marks the most famous event in the history of the great fortress. Wolfe had evidently a premonition. A young midshipman who was in the boat with him, as they floated on the river at midnight to the ravine, told afterwards how Wolfe, in a low voice, repeated Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard to the officers about him, including the line his own fate was soon to illustrate, "The paths of glory lead but to the grave," saying, as the recital ended, "Gentlemen, I would rather have written those lines than take Quebec." William Pitt, describing the great result of the battle, said, "The horror of the night, the precipice scaled by Wolfe, the empire he, with a handful of men, added to England, and the glorious catastrophe of contentedly terminating life where his fame began—ancient story may be ransacked and ostentatious philosophy thrown into the account, before an episode can be found to rank with Wolfe's."

QUEBEC RELIGIOUS HOUSES.

Various streets and stairways mount the great Quebec rock in zigzags, and there is also an inclined-plane passenger elevator. In the Lower Town, the narrow streets display quaint old French houses with queer-looking porches and oddly-built steps, high steep roofs, tall dormer windows and capacious stone chimneys. The French population cluster in the Lower Town and along St. Charles River. Churches and religious houses seem distributed everywhere. The great Catholic establishments are prominent in the Upper Town, nearly all founded in the seventeenth century. The Holy Father at Rome, recognizing the exalted position Quebec occupies in the Church, has made its Cathedral, like the patriarchal churches of Rome, a Basilica, its Archbishop being a Cardinal. It occupies the place of the first church built by Champlain, is not very large, but is magnificently decorated and contains fine paintings. Within are buried Champlain and Frontenac, and the great Bishop Laval de Montmorency. Adjoining is the palace of the Cardinal Archbishop, who is the Canadian Primate. Also adjoining are the spacious buildings of the Seminary, founded and richly endowed by Laval,—one of the wealthiest institutions and most extensive landowners of Quebec Province. This is still regarded as the controlling power of the Church in Lower Canada, as it has been for two centuries. There is also a Cathedral of the Church of England, a smaller and plain building, where the war-worn battle-flags of the British troops, carried in the Crimea, hang in the chancel, and the fine communion service was presented by King George III. Here is also the memorial of the early Anglican bishop of Quebec, Jacob Mountain, of whom it was said he happened to be in the presence of that king when the king expressed doubt as to who should be appointed bishop of the new See of Quebec, then just created. Said Dr. Mountain, "If your Majesty had faith there would be no difficulty." "How so?" asked the king; whereupon Mountain answered, "If you had faith you would say to this Mountain, be thou removed into that See, and it would be done." It was; Quebec getting a most excellent bishop, who labored over thirty years there, dying in 1825. There are also the splendid building of Laval University, one of the first educational institutions of the Dominion; the Hotel Dieu, and Ursuline Convent originally started by Madame de la Peltrie, in the Upper Town.

These establishments all had their origin in the religious enthusiasm attending the settlement of Canada, in which France took great pride, although Voltaire afterwards derided it as "Fifteen hundred leagues of frozen country." From Sillery, where the first Jesuit Mission was founded, went out the zealous missionaries and martyrs, who followed the Hurons into the depths of the forest, and sought to reclaim the Iroquois, as has been well said, "with toil too great to buy the kingdoms of this world, but very small as a price for the Kingdom of Heaven." From Sillery went the Jesuit Fathers, who explored all America, and also Jogues, BrÉbeuf, Lalemont, and others, to martyrdom in founding the primitive Canadian mission church. It was also the religious French women as well as the devoted men, who laid so deep and strong the pious foundation of Canada. Little do we really know of the nun, who in her religious devotion practically buries herself alive. Down in the Lower Town, near the Champlain Market, originally lived the first colony of Ursuline nuns, who came out with Madame de la Peltrie to teach and nurse the Indians. She afterwards left them, as already stated, and went to help settle Montreal. Later their establishment was removed to the Upper Town, where it now has an impressive array of buildings, with about fifty nuns, who educate most of the leading Quebec young ladies. The great success of this Order was due to its Superioress, Marie Gruyart, known as Mother Marie de l'Incarnation, a remarkable woman, who mastered the Huron and Algonquin languages, and devoted herself and her nuns to the special work of educating Indian girls, being called by Bossuet the "St. Theresa of the New World." In the shrines of this convent are relics of St. Clement Martyr, and other saints, brought from the Roman Catacombs. Its most famous possession is the remains of Montcalm, who was carried mortally wounded from the battlefield into the convent to die. His skull is preserved in a casket covered with glass, and is regarded with the greatest veneration. His body is buried in the chapel, and his grave is said to have been dug by a shell which burst there during the fierce bombardment preceding his death. This convent has had a chequered history, being repeatedly bombarded, and twice burnt during attacks on the city, and at times occupied as barracks by the troops of both friend and foe. Of late, however, the lives of these sisters of St. Ursula have been more tranquil.

Montcalm's Headquarters, Quebec

The most extensive collection of religious buildings is the Convent and Hospital of the Hotel Dieu, in the Upper Town. There are some sixty cloistered nuns of this Order, founded in 1639 by Cardinal Richelieu's niece, the Duchess d'Aguillon. They care for the sick and infirm poor, their hospital accommodating over six hundred. The oldest structure dates from 1654, and much of the collection is over two centuries old. The most precious relics in their convent are the remains of two of the Jesuit martyrs who went out from Sillery, Fathers BrÉbeuf and Lalemont. There is a silver bust of the former, and his skull is carefully preserved. Jean de BrÉbeuf was a Norman of noble birth, who came out with Champlain, and he and Lalemont were sent on a mission beyond Ontario to the Huron country, establishing the mission town of St. Ignace, near Niagara River. They lived sixteen years with these Indians, learning their language, and gaining great influence over them. The Iroquois from New York attacked and captured the town in 1649, taking the missionaries captive and putting them to death with frightful tortures. BrÉbeuf, who frequently had celestial visions, always announced his belief that he would die a martyr for Christ. The story of his torture is one of the most horrible in the colonial wars. He was bound to a stake and scorched from head to foot; his lower lip was cut away, and a red-hot iron thrust down his throat. They hung a necklace of glowing coals around his neck, which the indomitable priest stood heroically; they poured boiling water over his head and face in mockery of baptism; cut strips of flesh from his limbs, eating them before his eyes, scalped him, cut open his breast and drank his blood, then filled his eyes with live coals, and after four hours of torture, finally killed him by tearing out his heart, which the Indian chief at once devoured. The writer recording this terrible ordeal says, "Thus died Jean de BrÉbeuf, the founder of the Huron mission, its truest hero, and its greatest martyr. He came of a noble race,—the same, it is said, from which sprang the English Earls of Arundel, but never had the mailed barons of his line confronted a fate so appalling, with so prodigious a constancy. To the last he refused to flinch, and his death was the astonishment of his murderers." Gabriel Lalemont, his colleague, was a delicate young man, and was tortured seventeen hours, bearing the torments nobly, and though at times faltering, yet he would rally, and with uplifted hands offer his sufferings to heaven as a sacrifice. His bones are preserved in the Hotel Dieu. The burning of St. Ignace village dispersed the Hurons, but years afterwards a remnant was gathered by the Jesuit Fathers, and their descendants are at Lorette, up St. Charles River.

From the Ursuline Convent the Champlain Steps lead down the cliff to the Champlain Market, having alongside it the ancient little church of Notre Dame des Victoires. This is a plain stone church of moderate size, built in 1688 as the church of Notre Dame, on the site of Champlain's house. The interior, which has had modern renovation, displays rich gilding, and the church's interesting history is told by two angels hovering over the chancel, each bearing a banner, one inscribed "1690" and the other "1711." The fiery Count de Frontenac, who was Louis XIV.'s Governor of Quebec, had ravaged the New England colonies, and in 1690, shortly after the church was built, Sir William Phips, from Massachusetts, retaliated. The Iroquois, who were English allies, menaced Montreal, and all the French troops were sent thither. Suddenly, in October, Phips and his fleet appeared in the St. Lawrence below Quebec. Urgent messages were sent the troops to return, and the devout Ursuline nuns prayed for deliverance with such fervor in the little church, that Phips was struck with a phase of indecision, wasted his time, summoned the town to surrender, a message which the bold Frontenac spurned, and then, without making an attack, Phips wasted more time, until the French troops did return, so that when the demonstration was made it was successfully repulsed, and after repeated disasters Phips and his fleet sailed back to New England. Great was the rejoicing in Quebec, a thanksgiving procession singing Te Deums marched to the little church, and then the Bishop, with an elaborate ceremonial, changed its name to Notre Dame de la Victoire. Twenty-one years afterwards, in 1711, another British invading force came up the river under Sir Hovenden Walker, and again the intercession of Notre Dame was implored. The reassuring answer quickly came by fog and storm, producing dire disaster to the fleet, eight ships being wrecked and many hundreds drowned. Quebec again was saved; there was the wildest rejoicing, and in honor of the double triumph the church was re-named as Notre Dame des Victoires. An annual religious festival is held on the fourth Sunday in October to commemorate these miraculous deliverances. But the famous little church was not always to escape unscathed. One of the Ursuline nuns prophesied that it would ultimately be destroyed by the British, who would finally conquer, and when Wolfe's batteries bombarded Quebec in 1759 it severely suffered. It was repaired, and exists to-day as one of the most precious relics in the ancient city, in its oldest quarter, adjoining the market-place, and revered with all the unquestioning devotion of the habitan.

THE DUFFERIN TERRACE.

There is a fine outlook from the Dufferin Terrace, high up on the cliff above the river, the favorite gathering-place of the townsfolk on pleasant afternoons. The St. Lawrence flows placidly, with a narrow strip of town far down below at its edge, and a few vessels moored to the bank. At one's feet are the Champlain market and the famous little church, and a mass of the peaked tin-covered roofs of the diminutive French houses crowded in along the contracted street at the base of the cliff. High above rises the towering citadel with its rounded King's Bastion, the black guns thrusting their muzzles over the parapet and the Union Jack floating from a flagstaff at the top. Across the river is Point Levis, with piers and railroad terminals spread along the bank, and various villages with their imposing convents and churches crown the high bluff shore for a long distance up and down. Farther back upon the wooded slopes of the hills are the great modern built forts which command the river and are the military protection of Quebec, their lines of earthworks just discernible among the trees. The river sweeps grandly around the projecting point of Cape Diamond and the surmounting citadel, passing away to the northeast with broadening current, where it receives the St. Charles, and beyond is divided by the low projecting point of the green Isle of Orleans. The main channel flows to the right behind Point Levis, and the other far away to the left with the Falls of Montmorency in the distance, and the dark range of Laurentian Mountains for a background with the noble summit of Mount Sainte Anne, and the huge promontory of Cape Tourmente at the river's edge. Nearer, the Quebec Lower Town spreads to a flat point at St. Charles River, ending in the broad surface of Princess Louise Basin, containing the shipping. Beyond this, a long road extends along the northern river bank, through Beauport and down to Montmorency, bordered by little white French cottages strung along it like beads upon a thread. Such is the landscape of wondrous interest seen from the cliff of Quebec. Across the St. Lawrence, elevated one hundred and fifty feet above the river, between Quebec and Point Levis is about being constructed a great railway bridge with the largest cantilever span in the world.

A ride along the attractive road through Beauport gives an insight into the home life of the French Canadian habitan. The village stretches several miles, a single street bordered on either hand by rows of unique cottages, nearly all alike; one-story steep-roofed houses of wood or plaster, almost all painted white, and one reproducing the other. The first Frenchman who arrived built this sort of a house, and all his neighbors and descendants have done likewise. They, like him, do it, because their ancestors builded so. The house may be larger, or may be of stone, but there is no change in form or feature. The centre doorway has a room on either hand with windows, and a steep roof rises above the single story. The house, regardless of the front road, must face north or south. The long, narrow strips of farms, some only a few yards wide, and of enormous length, run mathematically north and south. It matters not that this highway, parallel with the river, runs northeast. That cannot change the inexorable rule, and hence all the houses are set at an angle with the road, and all the dividing-fence lines are diagonals. The sun-loving Gaul taboos shade-trees, and therefore the sun blazes down upon the unsheltered house in summer, while the careful housewife, to keep out the excessive light, closes all the windows with thick shades made of old-fashioned wall-papers. The little triangular space between the cottage and the road is usually a brilliant flower-garden. Crosses are set up frequently for the encouragement of the faithful, and there are imposing churches and ecclesiastical buildings at intervals. Along this road ride the French in their queer-looking two-wheeled calÉches, appearing much like a deep-bowled spoon set on wheels, and in elongated buckboard wagons of ancient build, surmounted by the most homely and venerable gig-tops. These French cottages are more picturesque than their vehicles.

The French Canadian habitan, the cultivateur, and peasant of Quebec province, is about the same to-day as he was two or three centuries ago. The Lower Canada village reproduces the French hamlet of the time of Louis XIV., and the inhabitants show the same zealous and absorbing religious devotion as when the French first peopled the St. Lawrence shores. Within the cottage, hung above the habitan's modest bed, is the black wooden cross that is to be the first thing greeting the waking eyes in the morning, as it has been the last object seen at night. Below it is the sprig of palm in a vase, with the little bonitier of holy water, and alongside is placed the calendar of religious events in the parish. The palm sprig is annually renewed on Palm Sunday, the old sprig being then carefully burnt. Great is its power in warding off lightning strokes and exorcising the evil spirits. The central object around which every village clusters is always the church, with its high walls, sloping roof, and tall and shining tin-clad spire. The curÉ is the village autocrat; the legal and medical adviser, the family counsellor, and usually the political leader of his flock. He blesses all the houses when they are built, and as soon as the walls are up a bunch of palm is attached to the gable or the chimney, a gun being fired to mark the event. When the Angelus tolls all stop work, wherever they are, and say the short prayer in devout attitude. Before beginning or completing any task the reverent habitans always piously cross themselves. They do this also in passing churches, or the many crosses and statues set up along the roads and in the villages. They are temperate, industrious and thrifty, live simply, eat the plainest food, are abundantly content with their lot, and usually raise large families. In fact, there is a bounty given, by act of the Quebec Provincial Legislature, of one hundred acres of land to parents having more than twelve living children. It is not infrequent to find twenty-five or thirty or more children in a single family. In personal appearance the habitan is generally of small or medium size, with sparkling brown eyes, dark complexion, a placid face and well-knit frame. He has strong endurance and capacity for work, but usually not much education, the prayer-book furnishing most of the family reading. The Church encourages early marriages, and domestic fecundity is honored as a special gift from Heaven. The pious veneration, like the creed of this simple-minded people, is the same to-day as it was in the seventeenth century. Their faith is fervent and their belief complete. They typify the beautiful idea the late Cardinal Newman exemplified in his exquisite poem:

LA BONNE SAINTE ANNE.

This road leads to the Montmorency River, a vigorous stream flowing out of Snow Lake, ninety miles northward, down to the St. Lawrence. For a mile or so above the latter river it has worn a series of steps in the limestone rocks, making attractive rapids, and the waters finally pitch over a nearly perpendicular precipice, almost at the verge of the St. Lawrence, falling two hundred and fifty feet in a magnificent cataract, the dark amber torrent brilliantly foaming, and making vast amounts of spray. In winter there is formed a cone of ice in front of these falls, sometimes two hundred feet high. The cataract goes down into a deep gorge, worn back through the rocks, some distance from the St. Lawrence bank, and protruding cliffs in the face of the fall make portions of the water, when part way down, dart out in huge masses of foam and spray. A large sawmill below gets its power from this cataract, and it also provides the electric lighting service for Quebec. Farther down the north shore of the St. Lawrence, through more quaint villages—L'Ange Gardien and Chateau Richer—the road leads along breezy hills and pleasant vales in the CotÉ de BeauprÉ, to the most renowned shrine of all Canada, about twenty miles below Quebec, the Church of "La Bonne Sainte Anne de BeauprÉ." This famous old church is the special shrine of the habitan, the objective point of many pilgrim parties from Canada and New England, where there now is a large population of French Canadians, as many as a hundred and fifty thousand pilgrims coming in a single year, and it is the most venerated spot in all Lower Canada. The CotÉ de BeauprÉ, the northern St. Lawrence shore below Montmorency, is an appanage of the Seminary of Quebec. The little Sainte Anne's river comes down from the slopes of Sainte Anne's Mountain among the Laurentides, and after dashing over the steep and attractive cataract of Sainte Anne, flows out to the St. Lawrence. Upon the level and picturesque intervale of this stream is a primitive French village, whose people get support partly by making bricks for Quebec, but mainly through the entertainment of the army of pilgrims coming to the miraculous shrine of "La Bonne Sainte Anne." The village spreads mostly along a narrow street filled with inns and lodging-houses which are crowded during the pilgrimage season from June till October, culminating on Sainte Anne's festival day, July 26th. To the eastward of the village is the beautiful church, not long ago built from the pious doles of the faithful, a massive and elaborate granite building. Just above it, upon the bank, is the original little church of Sainte Anne, which is so highly venerated, and wherein the sacred relics of the saint are carefully kept in a crystal globe, and are exhibited at morning mass, when their contemplation by the pilgrims, combined with faith, works miraculous cures. The old church of 1658, threatening to fall, was taken down in 1878, and rebuilt with the same materials on the original plan. It is quaintly furnished in the French-Canadian style of the seventeenth century, and one of its features is the mass of abandoned crutches and canes piled along the cornices and in the sacristy, left by the cripples who have departed relieved or healed.

This is probably the holiest ground in Canada, consecrated by nearly three centuries of the most fervent devotion of the ever-faithful habitans. Just below Sainte Anne is the companion village of St. Joachim. Sainte Anne was the mother and St. Joachim the father of the Virgin Mary. The tradition is that after Sainte Anne's body had reposed quietly for many years at Jerusalem, it was sent to the Bishop of Marseilles, and later to Apt, where it was placed in a subterranean chapel to guard it from heathen profanation. The church at Apt was swept away by the invader, but some seven centuries afterwards the Emperor Charlemagne visited the town, and marvellous incidents took place, light being seen emanating from the vault accompanied by a delicious fragrance, whereupon investigation was made and the long lost remains of Sainte Anne recovered. Ever since, her sacred relics have been highly venerated in France, and it was natural that the early French Canadians should bring their pious devotion into the new Province. Various churches were built in her honor, the chief being this one at BeauprÉ, by the devout Governor d'Allebout. With his own hands the Governor began the pious work of erecting the church, and as an encouragement, the Cathedral Chapter in France sent to the new shrine a relic of Sainte Anne—a portion of a finger-bone—together with a reliquary of silver, a lamp, and some paintings, all being preserved in this church. The legend of the building is, that upon its site a beautiful little child of the village was thrice favored with Heavenly visions. Upon the third appearance, the Virgin commanded the child that she should tell her people to build a church there in honor of her saintly mother. Thus was the location chosen, and while the foundation was being laid, a habitan of the CotÉ de BeauprÉ, one Guimont, sorely afflicted with rheumatism, came there with great difficulty, and filled with pain, to try and lay three stones in the wall, presumably in honor of the Virgin, her father and mother. With much labor and suffering he performed the task, but instantly it was completed he became miraculously cured. This began a long series of miracles, their fame spreading, so that devotion to Sainte Anne became a distinguishing feature of French-Canadian Catholicity.

The great Bishop Laval de Montmorency made Sainte Anne's day a feast of obligation. During the French rÉgime, vessels ascending the St. Lawrence always saluted when passing the shrine, in grateful thanksgiving that their prayers to Sainte Anne had been answered by deliverance from the perils of the sea. Pilgrims flocked thither, and many cures were wrought by pious veneration of the relics. As religion spread among the Indians, sometimes the adjacent shore would be covered by the wigwams of the converts who had come in their canoes from remote regions, and the more fervent of them would crawl on their knees from the river bank to the altar. To-day the pilgrims bring their offerings and make their vows, pleading for relief, many crossing the ocean from France, and it is said of these votaries at the shrine that they now come, "not in paint and feathers, but in cloth and millinery, and not in canoes, but in steamboats." It is noteworthy that in all the vicissitudes of war repeatedly waged around the famous place, the village being sacked and burned, the church was always preserved. When the British under Wolfe, prior to capturing Quebec in 1759, attacked BeauprÉ, they three times, tradition says, set fire to the church, but by the special intervention of Sainte Anne it escaped unscathed. Upon Sainte Anne's festival day, in 1891, many thousand pilgrims poured into the village, and Cardinal Archbishop Taschereau came down from Quebec, bringing another precious relic of Sainte Anne—a complete finger-joint—which he had obtained for the shrine from Carcassonne, in Languedoc, France. The Holy Father had raised the new church to the dignity of a Basilica, and two years previously he also sent from Rome a massive golden crown, set with precious stones, and valued at $56,000. This crown was worn by the rich statue of Sainte Anne, holding the infant Virgin in her arms, which stands before the chancel. There was an elaborate ceremonial, a large number of priests participating, and a solemn procession translated the precious relic to the church, where, after the services, it was venerated, the reliquary containing it being presented to the lips of each communicant kneeling in the sanctuary. Several miraculous cures were announced, but it is recorded that most of the cripples taken into the church had to be carried out again unrelieved. Around this sacred shrine crystallizes in the highest degree the pious veneration of the faithful French-Canadian habitans.

THE LOWER ST. LAWRENCE.

The river St. Lawrence below Quebec is a mighty arm of the sea, stretching in from the Atlantic, through a vast valley enclosed by the primeval forest. The northern shore shows the domination of ruggedness, for here begins the mountain wall of the Laurentides, stretching far away northeastward down the river towards Labrador. The southern shore is less forbidding, having wide fertile slopes rising to a background of wooded hills. Along the river bank is a sparsely scattered strip of humanity, which is likened to a rosary, having the primitive farmhouses for beads, and at every few miles a tall, cross-crowned church spire. Set in between the river banks, just below Quebec, is the broad and fertile Isle of Orleans, but beyond this the St. Lawrence is six miles wide, and steadily broadens, attaining twenty-four miles width at Tadousac, the mouth of the Saguenay, and thirty-five width at Metis, one hundred and fifty miles below Quebec. The Isle of Orleans is twenty miles long and very fertile, largely supplying the markets of Quebec. To the northward Mount Sainte Anne, the guardian of the famous shrine, rises twenty-seven hundred feet. Jacques Cartier so liked the grapes grown on the island that he called it the Isle of Bacchus, but the king, Francis I., would not have it so, and named it after his son, the Duke of Orleans. Here were massacred the Hurons by the Iroquois, who captured from them the great cross of Argentenay, carrying it off to their stronghold, on Onondaga Lake, New York, in 1661. On the northern shore of the island is the old stone church of St. Laurent and farther along that of St. Pierre, the meadows hereabout providing good shooting. The faithful at St. Laurent were said to have been long the envied possessors of a piece of the arm-bone of the Apostle Paul, a most precious relic, which was clandestinely seized and taken over to St. Pierre Church. This made a great commotion, and some of the young men of St. Laurent made an expedition at night, entered the church, recaptured the relic, and brought it back with some other articles, restoring it to the original shrine. A controversy between the villagers followed, growing so fierce that an outbreak was threatened, and the Archbishop at Quebec had to intervene to keep the peace. He ordered each church to restore the other its relics, which was done with solemn ceremony, processions marching along the road between the villages, and making the exchange midway, a large black cross since marking the spot.

The great promontory of the Laurentides, Cape Tourmente, stretches to the river, with the dark mass of ancient mountains spreading beyond in magnificent array, the cliffs rising high above the water, firs clinging to their sides and crowning their worn and rounded summits. On top of Tourmente the Seminarians have erected a huge cross, seen from afar, with a little chapel alongside. The old Canadian traveller, Charlevoix, said Cape Tourmente was probably so-called "because he that gave it this name suffered here by a gust of wind."

Here are Grosse Isle, the quarantine station for the river, and the Isle aux Coudres—Hazel Tree Island,—behind which a break in the Laurentides makes a pleasant nook, the Bay of St. Paul, having little villages named after the saints all about. Below, the mountain range rises into the great Mount Eboulements, twenty-five hundred feet high, its sides scarred by landslides brought down by various earthquakes, which were once so frequent that the Indians called the region Cuscatlan, meaning "the land that swings like a hammock." The name of this mountain means the "falling, shaking, crumbling mountain," but it is nevertheless now noted as the haughtiest headland of the Laurentides. This whole region has been a great sufferer from volcanic disturbances, the chief being in 1663, when the historian says "the St. Lawrence ran white as milk as far down as Tadousac; ranges of hills were thrown down into the river or were swallowed up in the plains; earthquakes shattered the houses and shook the trees until the Indians said that the forests were drunk; vast fissures opened in the ground and the courses of streams were changed. Meteors, fiery-winged serpents and ghostly spectres were seen in the air; roarings and mysterious voices sounded on every side, and the confessionals of all the churches were crowded with penitents awaiting the end of the world." Below this frowning mountain, the little Murray River flows in, making a deep bay and sandy beaches, and far back, under the shadows of the bordering hills, are the parish church and the French village of St. Agnes up the river. This place is Murray Bay, a favorite watering-place, known as Malbaie among the French, the hotels and wide one-story cottages of this Canadian Newport being scattered in the ravine and on the hill-slopes. When Champlain first entered this bay in 1608 he named it Malle Baie, explaining that this was because of "the tide that runs there marvellously." It is said that an attempt was once made to settle Murray Bay with Scotch emigrants, but the families who were sent out soon succumbed to the overwhelming influence of the surroundings, and their descendants, while having unmistakable Scottish names, have adopted the French language and customs. Over on the southern bank, thirty miles away, for the river is now very wide, is another favorite resort, Riviere du Loup, with the adjacent village of Kamouraska, the great church of St. Louis and a large convent being prominent in the latter.

Riviere du Loup is the best developed of the watering-places of the Lower St. Lawrence. The shore is gentle, and in sharp contrast with the rugged northern bank. The village spreads on a broad plateau, formed by the inflowing stream, there being hotels and boarding-houses scattered about, a tall-spired church back of the town, and a long wharf stretching out in front. To the eastward the sloping shore extends far away to Cacouna, eight miles below, another favorite resort also sentinelled by its church. The Riviere du Loup (Wolf River) naming this place flows out of the distant southern mountains to the St. Lawrence, and is said to have been so called from the droves of seals,—called by the French "loups-marines"—formerly frequenting the shoals off its mouth. Just back of the village the stream plunges down a waterfall eighty feet high. Cacouna is the most fashionable resort of the southern shore, and a place of comparatively recent growth, its semicircular bay with a good beach and the cool summer airs being the attractions. In front and connected by a low isthmus is a large peninsula of rounded granite rock, shaped much like a turtle-back and rising four hundred feet. From this came the Indian name, Cacouna, or the turtle.

THE GRAND AND GLOOMY SAGUENAY.

Far over to the northward, across the broad river, is ancient Tadousac, enclosed by the guarding mountains at the entrance to the Saguenay. The harbor and landing are within a small rounded bay, having the Salmon Hatching House of the Dominion alongside the wharf, a cascade pouring down the hillside behind, and a little white inn prettily perched above on a shelf of rock. The village spreads over irregular terraces, encircling three of these little rounded bays, beyond which the narrow Saguenay chasm goes off westward through the mountains into a savage wilderness. This place has been a trading-post with the Indians for over three centuries, and the ancient buildings of the Hudson Bay Company testify to the traffic in furs, once so good, which has become almost obsolete. It was visited by Cartier in 1535, and afterwards was established as one of the earliest missions of the Jesuits, who came here in 1599 and raised the cross among the Nasquapees of the Saguenay—the "upright men," as they called themselves,—and the Montaignais, both then powerful tribes, which have since entirely disappeared from this region, having withdrawn to its upper waters, around and beyond Lake St. John. The old chapel, replacing the original Jesuit church—said to have been the first erected in North America—stands down by the waterside, a diminutive, peak-roofed, one-story building, kept as a memorial of the past, for the people now worship in a fine new stone church farther up the rounded hill-slope. These knoll-like rounded hills or mamelons named the place, for they are numerous, and Tadousac, literally a "nipple," is the Indian word for them. The most valued possession of the church is a figure of the child Jesus, originally sent to the mission by King Louis XIV. This is the oldest settlement of the Lower St. Lawrence.

The stern and gloomy Saguenay, the largest tributary of the Lower St. Lawrence, is one of the most remarkable rivers in the world. Its main portion is a tremendous chasm cleft in a nearly straight line for sixty miles in the Laurentian Mountains, through an almost unsettled wilderness. These Laurentides make the northern shore of the St. Lawrence for hundreds of miles below Quebec, rising into higher peaks and ridges in the interior, and being the most ancient part of America, the geologists telling us the waves of the Silurian Sea washed against this range when only two small islands represented the rest of the continent. Through this vast chasm the Saguenay brings down the waters of Lake St. John and its many tributaries, some of them rising in the remote north, almost up to Hudson Bay. This lower portion of the river goes through an almost uninhabitable desert of gloomy mountains, the tillable land being in the basin of the Upper Saguenay and Lake St. John, the people of that valley living there in almost complete isolation. Logs and huckleberries are the crops produced on this savage river, the only things the sparse population can depend upon for a living, and the fine blueberries bring them the scant doles of ready money they ever see. The Saguenay's inky waters have the smell of brine as they break in froth upon the shore, and then the air-bubbles show the real color to be that of brandy. The upper tributaries give this color as they flow out of forests of spruce and hemlock and swamps filled with mosses and highly colored roots and vegetable matter. Almost all the lakes and rivers of the vast wilderness north of the St. Lawrence present a similar appearance, their rapids and waterfalls, seen under the sunshine, seeming like sheets of liquid amber.

The vast accumulations of waters gathered from the heart of the Laurentides by the tributaries of Lake St. John flow down the rapids below the lake in a stream rivalling those of Niagara. Thus the Saguenay comes into being in the form of lusty twins—the Grand Discharge and the Little Discharge—deep and narrow river channels worn in the rocks. For some miles they run separately through rapids and pools, finally joining at the foot of Alma Island, where begin the Gervais Rapids, four miles long. The Grand Discharge is a beautiful stream of rapids, the rippling and roaring currents flowing through a maze of islands, while the Little Discharge is a condensed stream, so powerful and unruly that it actually destroys the logs in its boisterous cataracts, the government having made a "Slide," down which the timber is run past the dangerous places. After passing Gervais Rapids the Saguenay has a quiet reach of fifteen miles to the Grand Ramous, the most furious cascade of all, and then a few more miles of rapids and falls bring it to Chicoutimi, ending its wild career where it meets the tide above Ha Ha Bay. The first bold Frenchmen who ventured up through the stupendous and forbidding chasm of the Lower Saguenay gave this bay its name, to show their delight at having finally emerged from the gloomy region. At Ha Ha Bay the tide often rises twenty-one feet, and below, the river forces its passage with a broad channel through almost perpendicular cliffs out to the St. Lawrence. Its great depth is noteworthy, showing what a fearful chasm has been split open, there being in many places a mile to a mile and a half depth, while the channel throughout averages eight hundred feet depth. For most of the distance the river is a mile or more wide. The original name given the river by the Montaignais was Chicoutimi, or the "deep water," now given the village below the foot of the rapids. The present name is a corruption of the Indian word SaggishsÉkuss, meaning "a strait with precipitous banks." The sad sublimity of the impressive chasm culminates at Eternity Bay, where on either hand rise in stately grandeur to sixteen hundred feet elevation above the water Cape Trinity, with its three summits, and Cape Eternity. Ten miles above is Le Tableau, a cliff one thousand feet high, its vast smooth front like an artist's canvas.

This sombre river, whose bed is much lower than that of the St. Lawrence, is frozen for almost its whole course during half the year, and snow lies on its bordering mountains until June. It makes a saddening impression upon most visitors. Bayard Taylor compared the Saguenay chasm to the Dead Sea and Jordan Valley, describing everything as "hard, naked, stern, silent; dark gray cliffs of granitic gneiss rise from the pitch-black water; firs of gloomy green are rooted in their crevices and fringe their summits; loftier ranges of a dull indigo hue show themselves in the background, and over all bends a pale, cold, northern sky." Another traveller calls it "a cold, savage, inhuman river, fit to take rank with Styx and Acheron;" and "Nature's sarcophagus," compared to which, "the Dead Sea is blooming;" and so solitary, dreary and monotonous that it "seems to want painting, blowing up or draining—anything, in short, to alter its morose, quiet, eternal awe."

EXPLORING THE SAGUENAY CHASM.

Ha Ha Bay, where the exploring Frenchmen found such relief for their oppressed feelings, is a long strait thrust through the mountains southwest from the Saguenay for several miles, broadening at the head into an oval bay, practically a basin among the crags, with two or three French villages around it, named after various saints. The modest one-story huts of the habitans fringe the lower slopes near the water's edge along the valleys of several small streams, each cluster having its church with the tall spire. The basin is two or three miles across, enclosed by bold cliffs and rounded hills, the wide beaches of sand and pebble showing the great rise and fall of the tide. There is a sawmill or two, and lumber and huckleberries are the products of the district. Chicoutimi village is above the chasm, at a point where the intervale broadens, the savage mountains retiring, leaving a space for gentle tree-clad slopes and cultivated fields. Standing high on the western bank are the magnificent Cathedral, the Seminary, a Sailors' Hospital, and the Convent of the Good Shepherd, and not far away a tributary stream pours fifty feet down the Chicoutimi Falls in a rushing cascade of foam. There are extensive sawmills, and timber ships come in the summer for cargoes for Europe, and the place has railway connections with Lake St. John and thence southward to Quebec. There is a population of about three thousand. The universal little one-story, peak-roofed, whitewashed French cottages abound, some having a casing of squared pieces of birch-bark to protect them from the weather, making them look much like stone houses, and peeping inside it is found that the inhabitants usually utilize their old newspapers for wall-paper.

From Chicoutimi down to Tadousac the region of the Saguenay chasm is practically without habitation. There are two or three small villages, chiefly abodes of timber-cutters, but it is otherwise uninhabited; nor do the precipitous cliffs usually leave any place near the river for a dwelling to be put. As the visitor goes along on the steamboat it is a steady and monotonous panorama of dark, dreary, round-topped crags, with stunted firs sparsely clinging to their sides and tops where crevices will let them, while the faces of the cliffs are white, gray, brown and black, as their granites change in color. A few frothy but attenuated cascades pour down narrow fissures. The scene, while sublime, is forbidding, and soon becomes so monotonous as to be tiresome. This gaunt and savage landscape culminates in Eternity Bay. Ponderous buttresses here guard the narrow gulf on the southern shore, formed by the outflow of a little river. The western portal, Cape Trinity, as the steamboat approaches from above, appears as a series of huge steps, each five hundred feet high, and the faithful missionaries have climbed up and placed a tall white statue of the Virgin on one of the steps, about seven hundred feet above the river, and a large cross on the next higher step, both being seen from afar. Passing around into the bay, the gaunt eastern face of this enormous promontory is found to be a perpendicular wall of the rawest granite, standing sixteen hundred feet straight up from the water. At the top it grandly rises on the bay side into three huge crown-like domes, which, upon being seen by the original French explorers when they came up the river, made them appropriately name it the Trinity. This is one of the most awe-inspiring promontories human eyes ever beheld, as it rises sheer out of water over half a mile deep. Across the narrow bay, the eastern portal, Cape Eternity, similarly rises in solemn grandeur, with solid unbroken sides and a wooded top fully as high. The entire Saguenay River is of much the same character, repeating these crags and promontories in myriad forms. While not always as high, yet the enclosing mountains elsewhere are almost as impressive and fully as dismal. The steamboat, aided by the swift tide, moves rapidly through the deep canyon, one rounded peak and long ridge being much like the others, with the same monotonous dreariness everywhere, and every rift disclosing only more distant sombre mountains. The chasm throughout its length has no beacons for navigation, the shores being so steep and the waters so deep they are unnecessary. A sense of relief is felt when the open waters at Tadousac and the St. Lawrence are reached, for the journey makes everyone feel much like a writer in the London Times, who said of it: "Unlike Niagara and all other of God's great works in nature, one does not wish for silence or solitude here. Companionship becomes doubly necessary in an awful solitude like this."

THE ANGLING GROUNDS OF LOWER CANADA.

Quebec province, on the Lower St. Lawrence, for hundreds of miles north and east of the river is filled with myriads of lakes and streams that are the haunts of the hunter and angler, and the Government gets considerable revenue from the fishery rentals. As far away as five hundred miles from Quebec, up in Labrador, is the Natashquin River, and eight hundred miles down the St. Lawrence is the Little Esquimau, these being the most distant fishery grounds. Among the noted fishing streams are the grand Cascapedia, the Metapedia, the Upsalquitch, the Patapedia, the Quatawamkedgewick (usually called, for short, the "Tom Kedgewick"), and the Restigouche, on the southern side of the Lower St. Lawrence, their waters being described as flowing out to "the undulating and voluptuous Bay of Chaleurs, full of long folds, of languishing contours, which the wind caresses with fan-like breath, and whose softened shores receive the flooding of the waves without a murmur." Around the great Lake St. John there is also a maze of lakes and fishery streams. The most noted Canadian fishery organization is the "Restigouche Salmon Club," having its club-house on the Restigouche River, at its junction with the Metapedia, and controlling a large territory. The guides in this region are usually Micmac Indians, who have been described on account of their energy as the "Scotch-Irish Indians." This tribe originally inhabited the whole of Lower Canada south of the St. Lawrence, being found there by Cartier, and the French named them the Sourequois or "Salt-Water Indians," because they lived on the seacoast. They were staunch allies of the French, who converted them to Christianity from being sun-worshippers. They have a reservation near Campbellton, on the Restigouche, and a populous village surrounding a Catholic church. There are now about seven thousand of them, all told, throughout the provinces. Glooscap was the mythical chief of the Micmacs, whose power and genius were shown throughout all the region from New England to GaspÉ. He was of unknown origin, and invincible, and he conquered the "great Beaver, feared by beasts and men," on the river Kennebecasis, near St. John. Glooscap's favorite home and beaver-pond was the Basin of Minas, in Nova Scotia, where afterwards dwelt Longfellow's Evangeline. Micmac traditions describe him as the "envoy of the Great Spirit," who lived above in a great wigwam, and was always attended by an aged dame and a beautiful youth. He had the form and habits of humanity, and taught his tribe how to hunt and fish, to build wigwams and canoes, and to heal diseases. He controlled the elements and overthrew all enemies of his people; but the tradition adds that on the approach of the English, the great Glooscap, "finding that the ways of beasts and men waxed evil," turned his huge hunting-dogs into stone, and his huntsmen into restless and wailing loons, and then he vanished.

The route to the angling waters of the great Lake St. John is by railway northward from Quebec. It goes up the valley of St. Charles River, past Lorette, where beautiful cascades turn the mill-wheels. Here are gathered the scanty halfbreed remnant of the Hurons, once the most powerful and ferocious tribe in Canada, who drove out the Iroquois and compelled their migration down to New York State. These Indians are said to have been Wyandots, but when the French saw them, with their hair rising in bristling ridges above their painted foreheads, the astonished beholders exclaimed, "Quelles hures!" (what boars!) and hence the name of Huron came to them. The railroad goes for two hundred miles past lakes and streams, and through the dense forests of these remote Laurentian mountains, until it finally comes out on the lake shore at the ancient mission town of "Our Lady of Roberval," now become, through the popularity of the district, a modern watering-place. This great Lake St. John, so much admired by the Canadian and American anglers, was called by the Indians the Picouagomi, or "Flat Lake," and it is in a region shaped much like a saucer, lying in a hollow, with hills rising up into mountains in the background all around. The lake is thirty miles long and about twenty-five miles across, having no less than nineteen large rivers, besides smaller ones flowing into it from the surrounding mountains, the vast accumulation of waters being carried off by the Saguenay. The immense flow of some of these rivers may be realized when it is known that the Mistassini, coming down from the northward, is three hundred miles long, and the Peribonka four hundred miles long, while the Ouiatchouan from the south, just before reaching the lake, dashes down a grand cascade, two hundred and eighty feet high, making an elongated sheet of perfectly white foam.

Until the middle of the nineteenth century, this wonderful lake and its immense tributaries were scarcely known to white men, yet upon its shores stood Notre Dame de Roberval and St. Louis Chambord, two of the oldest Jesuit Indian missions in America. For more than two centuries, until the angler and lumberman began going to this remote wilderness, it was a buried paradise in the distant woods, without inhabitants, excepting a few Montaignais and their priests, and a scattered post or two of the Hudson Bay Company, whose occasional expeditions over to Quebec for supplies were the only communication with the outer world. The solid graystone church and convent stand in bold relief among the neat little white French cottages at Roberval, there are an immense sawmill and a modern hotel, while in front is the grand sweep of the lake, like a vast inland sea, its opposite shore almost beyond vision, excepting where a far-away mountain spur may loom just above the horizon. Here lives the famous ouananiche of the salmon family, called "land-locked," because it is believed he is unable to get out to other waters. He is a gamey and magnificent fish, with dark-blue back and silvery sides, mottled with olive spots, thus literally clothed in purple and fine silver. He has enormous strength, making him the champion finny warrior of the Canadian waters. The chief fishery ground for him is in the swirling rapids of the Grand Discharge. The native Montaignais, or "mountaineer" Indian of this region, is a most expert angler, seducing the royal fish with an inartistic lump of fat pork on the end of a line from his frail canoe among the rapids, and hooking the game more effectively than the costliest rod and reel in the hands of a "tenderfoot." These dusky, consumptive-looking, copper-colored Indians spend the winters in the unexplored wilds of the Mistassini, and wander through all the wilderness as far as Hudson Bay. When the snows are gone, they bring in the pelts of the beaver, otter, fox and bear, to trade at the Company posts, and living in rude birch-bark huts on the bank of the lake, spend the summer in fishing, and pick up a few dollars as boatmen and guides.

THE ST. LAWRENCE ESTUARY.

Below the mouth of the Saguenay, the St. Lawrence stretches four hundred miles to the ocean, its broad estuary constantly growing wider. On the southern shore, below Cacouna, there is another resort at a little river's mouth, known as Trois Pistoles. It is related that in the olden time a traveller was ferried across this little river, the fisherman doing the service charging him three pistoles (ten franc pieces), equalling about six dollars. The traveller was astonished at the charge, and asked him the name of the river. "It has no name," was the reply, "it will be baptized at a later day." "Then," said the traveller, anxious to get the worth of his money, "I baptize it Three Pistoles," a name that has continued ever since. This diminutive village seems rather in luck, for unlike most of the others, it has two churches, each with a tall spire. The Lower St. Lawrence shores maintain communication across the wide estuary by canoe ferries, established at various places. A stout canoe, twenty feet or more long, and having a crew of seven men, usually makes the passage. The boat is built with broad, flat keel, shod with iron, moving easily over the ice which for half the year closes the river, not breaking up until late in the spring, and sometimes obstructing the outlet through the Strait of Belle Isle until July. Farther down the southern shore, below Trois Pistoles, is Rimouski, a much larger place, described as the metropolis of the Lower St. Lawrence, and the outlet of the region of the Metapedia. This town has a Bishop and a Cathedral. Beyond are Father Point and Metis, and the land then extends past Cape Chatte into the wilderness of GaspÉ. When Jacques Cartier first entered the river in 1534, he landed at GaspÉ, taking possession of the whole country in the name of the King of France, and erecting a tall cross adorned with the fleur-de-lys. Very appropriately, GaspÉ means the "Land's End." They found here the Micmac Indians, who were then reputed to be quite intelligent, knowing the points of the compass and position of the stars, and having rude maps of their country and a knowledge of the cross. Their tradition, as told to Cartier's sailors, was that in distant ages a pestilence harassed them, when a venerable man landed on their shore and stayed the progress of the disease by erecting a cross. This mysterious benefactor is supposed to have been a Norseman, or early Spanish adventurer. An old Castilian tale is that gold-hunting Spaniards, after the discovery by Columbus, sailed along these coasts, and finding no precious metals, said in disgust to the Indians, "Aca nÁda," meaning, "there is nothing here." This phrase became fixed in the Indian mind, and supposing Cartier's party to be the same people, they endeavored to open conversation by repeating the same words, "Aca nÁda! aca nÁda!" Thus, according to one theory, originated the name of Canada, the Frenchmen supposing they were telling the name of the country. Another authority is that the literal meaning of the Mohawk (Iroquois) word Canada is, "Where they live," or "a village," and as it was the word Cartier, on his voyages up the river, most frequently heard from the Indians, as applied to the homes of the people, it naturally named the country.

The surface of the southern country behind Cape Chatte, and of GaspÉ (Cape GaspÉ being a promontory seven hundred feet high), rises into the frowning mountains of Notre Dame, the most lofty in Lower Canada, the chief peak elevated four thousand feet. In 1648 a French explorer wrote of these stately ranges that "all those who come to New France know well enough the mountains of Notre Dame, because the pilots and sailors, being arrived at that point of the great river which is opposite to these high mountains, baptize, ordinarily for sport, the new passengers, if they do not turn aside by some present the inundation of this baptism, which is made to flow plentifully on their heads." The bold southern shore of the St. Lawrence finally ends beyond Cape GaspÉ, where its mouth is ninety-six miles wide in the headland of Cape Rosier, described by dreading mariners as the "Scylla of the St. Lawrence."

The northern shore of the great river, beyond the mouth of the Saguenay, is almost uninhabited. There is an occasional fishing-post, but it is almost an unknown region, though once there were Jesuit missions and trading-places, the Indians having since gone away. The iron-bound coast goes off, past Point de Monts, the Egg Islands and Anticosti, to the Strait of Belle Isle. This strait is named after a barren, treeless and desolate island at its entrance, about nine miles long, which has been most ironically named the Belle Isle, but the early mariners, nevertheless, called it the Isle of Demons. They did this because they heard, when passing, "a great clamor of men's voices, confused and inarticulate, such as you hear from a crowd at a fair or market-place." This is explained by the almost constant grinding of ice-floes in the neighborhood. The Mingan River, a beautiful stream where speckled trout are caught, comes down out of the northern mountains, opposite Anticosti Island, and is occasionally visited by enthusiastic anglers. This is the boundary of Labrador, which stretches almost indefinitely beyond, comprising the whole northeastern Canadian peninsula, an almost unexplored region of nearly three hundred square miles. It is described as a rocky plateau of ArchÆan rocks, highest on the northeast side and to the south, more or less wooded, and sloping down to lowlands towards Hudson Bay. It is a vast solitude, the rocks split and blasted by frosts, and the shores washed by the Atlantic waves, where reindeer, bears, wolves and a few Esquimaux wander. Its great scenic attraction is the Grand Falls. To the northward of the headwaters of Mingan River is a much larger stream, the Grand River, draining a multitude of lakes on the higher Labrador table-land, northeastward through Hamilton Inlet into the Atlantic. In 1861 a venturesome Scot of the Hudson Bay Company, prospecting through the region, first saw this magnificent cataract. For thirty years the falls were unvisited, but in 1891 an expedition was made to them, and they have been since again visited. The cataract is described as a magnificent spectacle, the river with full flow leaping from a rocky platform into a huge chasm, with a roar that can be heard twenty miles and an immense column of rainbow-illumined spray. The plunge is made after descending rapids for eight hundred feet, and is over a precipice two hundred feet wide, the fall being three hundred and sixteen feet. The water tumbles into a canyon five hundred feet deep and extending between high walls of rock for about twenty-five miles. The distant Labrador coasts on bay and ocean abound in seals and fish, and the adjacent seas are vast producers of codfish and herring. There are few visitors, however, excepting the hardy "Fishermen," of whom Whittier sings:

"Hurrah! the seaward breezes

Sweep down the bay amain;

Heave up, my lads, the anchor!

Run up the sail again!

Leave to the lubber landsmen

The rail-car and the steed;

The stars of heaven shall guide us,

The breath of heaven shall speed!

END OF VOLUME II.