"Chicago to the Sea." Eastern Excursionist / A complete guide to the principal eastern summer resorts, including: Niagara Falls, the White Mountains, Saint Lawrence and Saguenay Rivers, Montreal and Quebec, the New England sea beaches, etc., and how and when to enjoy them.

by William C. Gage

THE SAGUENAY RIVER.

This is the largest affluent of the St. Lawrence, which it joins about 120 miles below Quebec. The scenery of the Saguenay is strikingly grand and romantic, and unlike anything else east of the Rocky Mountains. It is usually visited by boat, and the trip down the St. Lawrence to Tadousac, at the junction of the two streams, and up the Saguenay among its bold, wild scenery, should not be omitted, even at the expense of slighting some other point of interest lying in the highways of fashionable travel.

Leaving Quebec by steamer, you pass through some remarkably fine scenery, in which the majestic St. Lawrence abounds, the river being in some places thirty miles in width, and dotted with a multitude of islands, abounding in game. The Falls of St. Anne are on the river of that name, which enters the St. Lawrence off the lower end of Orleans Island through a bold ravine. The quarantine station on Grosse Isle is passed, and is associated with sad memories of the famine in Ireland. It received twenty thousand plague-stricken emigrants, of whom six thousand now lie in a single grave, marked by a stone monument.

Ninety miles below Quebec is the fashionable watering place known as Murray Bay. The river is here twenty miles wide, and the tides have a range of twenty feet in height. On the south shore of the river, still further down, is Riviere du Loup, a place of some importance, and six miles below it is Cacouna, already quite famous as a pleasure resort, and yearly increasing in popularity. Across the river from Cacouna is Tadousac, at the mouth of the far-famed Saguenay, formerly a place of some commercial importance as a post of the Hudson Bay Company, and one of the first towns on the St. Lawrence fortified by the French. It has a good hotel, near which is a little church over 250 years old.

TADOUSAC, AT MOUTH OF SAGUENAY RIVER.

The Saguenay River is remarkable, not only for its great depth, but also for the marvelous height of its banks. It seems to flow through a rift in the Laurentian Mountains, which appear to be cleft, as it were, to the very foundations, the height of the cliffs rising from the edge of the river being equaled only by the depth to which they descend below the surface. The source of the river is 130 miles from its junction with the St. Lawrence, in Lake St. John, which is fed by eleven rivers, draining an immense watershed, the great volume resultant pouring through this remarkable gorge, in many places unfathomable. At St. John’s Bay, 27 miles above Tadousac, the water is one mile and a half in depth, and but little less at Eternity Bay, six miles beyond. At the latter place, the wonderful capes, Trinity and Eternity, like giant sentinels guard the entrance, rising 1,500 and 1,900 feet, respectively, above the water.

Ha-Ha Bay is sixty miles above Tadousac, and is nine miles long by six wide. It has also been named Grand Bay. The first-named title is said to have come from the exclamations of delight which sprung from the lips of the navigators of the river on its discovery; and in contrast with the gloomy and forbidding aspect of the lower portions of the river, it would seem that such an outburst might be perfectly natural. The mountains around Ha-Ha Bay abound in whortleberries, or blueberries, as they are here called, and a very important industry with the natives is the gathering and shipment to market of the bountiful harvest thus kindly furnished by nature, the picking season extending from the middle of July until the falling of the snow, and the supply being inexhaustible.

HA-HA BAY, SAGUENAY RIVER.

CAPES ETERNITY AND TRINITY.

INDIAN CURIOSITY SELLER.

Chicoutimi, a few miles beyond, is at the head of navigation, the river being obstructed above this point by rapids and falls. Lumbering is one of its important industries, the immense forests of the vicinity being as yet almost in their virgin state, and the harbor accessible to the largest vessels, thus giving it natural facilities of great value.

The fishing in the Saguenay River and its tributaries is one of the chief attractions to the sportsman. Salmon abound, and the quality of the fish taken from such deep, cold water can readily be inferred by the disciples of Walton. Game also abounds in the forests, some specimens being well worthy of the skill and nerve of the trained hunter.

A student of character will find an interesting subject in the person of the Canadian Indian, to be met in various localities in Canada. Combining with his native craft the shrewdness of a Connecticut Yankee, he will often appear in the role of a vender of curiosities, in which “taking” attitude our artist presents him.

In closing our notes on the Saguenay, we feel that but faint justice can be done to its wonderful attractions. It has been tersely described by a writer as a “region of primeval grandeur, where art has done nothing and nature everything; where, at a single bound, civilization is left behind and nature stands in unadorned majesty; where Alps on Alps arise; where, over unfathomable depths, through mountain gorges, the steamer ploughs the dark flood on which no sign of animal life appears.” A better summing up of its peculiar features, in so few words, could not be written, and the tourist who visits the scenes we have briefly described will indulge in no regrets, unless it be that want of time to do justice to the trip gives only hurried glances where hours and days might be enjoyed in realizing the sublime grandeur of the surroundings.

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