“And you have very nearly missed the moon,” added Jack. “We’ve been watching it for the last two or three evenings in fear and trembling lest Miss Macnab and Miss Thorburn should miss their cherished desire of seeing Cape Eternity by moonlight.”
“Oh, I think there is enough of it left yet,” said Kate, while Mrs. Sandford remarked that she thought she never should have been able to tear those people away from the delights of the Thousand Islands.
“Or from Quebec,” said Flora and May together. “That was almost the loveliest of all.”
“Ah, I told you you would enjoy Quebec, Miss Macnab!” said Jack Armstrong. And presently May observed that he had drawn Flora a little aside, and engaged her in an animated description of what she had most enjoyed since they had left Port Hope. And, indeed, she was looking charming enough, in her Inverness cape and deerstalker cap, to draw forth a good deal of admiration, May thought. As for Kate, in her rough ulster and cap to match, with her color heightened by the sharp sea breeze, she was looking brilliantly handsome, so evidently thought Mr. Winthrop, who kept near her, displacing Hugh altogether, as May at last believed. But now they were nearly opposite Les Pèlerins, the strange parallel rocks that stand, silent, stately warders beside the great river, widening into a broad sea-like expanse, with a line of distant hills faintly breaking the horizon to the right, while on the left, the great hills which had been accompanying them all day now receded somewhat into the distance. Then the little red brick town of Rivière-du-Loup gleamed out ruddy on its sloping hill, growing more and more distinct until the steamer had drawn up beside the high pier, on which were a number of summer tourists eager to see who were on the boat, or to get a little fresh news from the outside world. Bidding these farewell, they quickly passed the long, straggling line of white cottages that marked the pleasant watering-place of Cacouna. Our travelers meant to visit it, and also Rivière-du-Loup, with its grand, romantic waterfall, on the homeward way, but at present their thoughts were engrossed with the Saguenay, and May’s dreaming imagination was already busy with the blue ridge of rounded hills that, as she was told, marked the entrance and the course of that mysterious river. But, as they crossed over towards the south side of the sea-like river, they had a specimen of the glorious sunsets which form one of the chief charms of Cacouna, shedding over the calm expanse of water a flood of golden glory, and touching the distant hills with the richest amethystine hues, till they seemed to float in a dreamy haze, between the amber sky and the shimmering golden tide below. The sight held the little party fascinated with its entrancing spell, and they remained on deck heedless of the summons of the clamorous tea-bell, until the rich hues and the golden glory had faded at last, not into the “light of common day,” but into the soft vagueness of the long northern twilight. Then at last, with a sigh for the brief duration of the beautiful vision, they descended to the lamp-lit cabin to enjoy the appetizing evening meal, which their long afternoon in the bracing air had made them all ready to thoroughly enjoy.
When they again came on deck they were just passing some straggling islets, darkly green in the fast fading light, and rounding Pointe Noire,—the fitly-named dark point of rock that guards the entrance to the strange mysterious dark northern fiord about which have gathered so many a marvelous story. And now May was eagerly looking out for Tadousac, with her heroine Kitty, and the venerable old church and all the little romance that followed, uppermost in her imagination. Then those rounded sand-hills, skirted by rocks and fringed with a scanty vegetation of stunted firs, were, Mr. Winthrop said, the “Mamelons,”[[1]] about which cluster strange old Indian legends, of fierce conflicts between the Algonquins and the Esquimaux—weird tales, too, of a doom or curse on intermarriage of an Algonquin with an alien race, which here overtook the offender with its inevitable Nemesis. In the deepening gloaming, in the shadow of the dusky heights that towered on high, casting long, dark, quivering reflections in the dark mysterious stream, with scattered lights twinkling out here and there, through the clustering foliage, is Tadousac. With its straggling brown dwellings, and the massive timbers of the great pier storehouse looming up in undefined vagueness above them, it was easy to imagine any number of legendary tales of love and conflict; of
“Old unhappy things
And battles long ago.”
as Hugh quoted once more. The steamer was made fast to the pier, with much creaking and groaning, as if shuddering to begin the ascent of the dark, fateful river, which, it is said, one of the earliest explorers attempting with his men, found a fatal enterprise, none of them ever returning to the light of day.
As the steamer was to remain here half an hour, the whole party landed, as did most of the other passengers, to inspect the little rude ancient church, built nearly three hundred years ago for the Indians and the trappers who traded with them—the oldest surviving building north of Mexico. They took the route which May had so often followed in imagination with her shadowy friends of the story, across the ravine and through the village, with its lights twinkling all over its little cove, till they reached the plain, bare old wooden church, beside which they stood for some time almost in silence, reverently regarding the little wilderness-temple which had so long alone met the needs and witnessed the devotions of men rough and rude, but men still with the felt need of Divine help in their strange wild lives. But the visitors could not enter, nor were they indeed anxious to do so, for they felt that this might have broken the spell thrown over them by the bare sombre, weather-beaten exterior and venerable associations. Moreover, the steamer was already whistling its summons, so they set out on their return through the same shadowy, suggestive gloom of dark pine-studded rocks and deep murmuring unseen waterfalls, till they came out suddenly on the clustered lights of the landing and the steamer streaming with light through every crevice, just as May had seen it so often, already, through the eyes of Miss Kitty Ellison.
Well, they had left Tadousac behind now, and had fairly entered into the shadows of the dark and sullen Saguenay, which seems to lie like a prisoner between its stern frowning warders and to have hewn out its difficult passage to unite with the St. Lawrence, through the stern rocks that would have shut it up in its lonely gloom forever. To Hugh, the passage left behind seemed indeed a fortress-gate, strongly flanked by tall overhanging rocks, crags with gnarled savins, and white-stemmed birches gleaming even in the deepening dusk, clinging, as if for life, to the jagged precipices. They had lost sight of the twinkling lights of Tadousac, set in its little rocky niche of the “petite montagne qui est presque coupée par la mer,” as Champlain had described it long ago, with its “little harbor,” which would hold only nine or ten ships in the embouchure of the Saguenay, though many more could find shelter in the bay that fronts the St. Lawrence. The captain of the steamer told the young men about the little lake close at hand, which guards the precious young salmon raised there for the Government’s fish-breeding establishment at Anse de l’eau.
And now the dark, vague forms of Titans seemed to rise up on either hand,—great massive hills and cliffs that seemed almost to shut out the light of the stars; and most of the party, growing tired of the somewhat awesome silent procession, took refuge in the lighted saloon, from whence soon came strains of sweet music, and the tones of Flora’s fresh young voice, in “Over the Sea to Skye,” which seemed not inappropriate to the genius loci. Mr. Winthrop and Hugh remained talking with the captain about the more striking features of the scenery and its historical associations; and to May, half listening to them, half dreaming out again the vivid sketches of Parkman, the solitude seemed peopled once more with the old explorers who established ties of commerce between far-away St. Malo and these lonely wilds,—Cartier and Roberval, Pontgravé and Chauvin, and their bands of trappers and voyageurs, for whom the Indians paddled their canoes, laden with costly furs, down this dark, fathomless stream. She could realize more vividly the fate of one unfortunate band, left at so lonely a post to starve, through one miserable winter. For, first, by reason of its fabled wealth of gold and silver and precious stones, and afterwards for the sake of its real riches in furs, the Saguenay was even better known to the early pioneers than was the river between Quebec and Montreal. Then, too, May’s thoughts went back to that very different little band of missionaries,—Recollets first, Jesuits afterwards,—who came bearing a Christian message of love to the savages of this wild region. She remembered how the trio of Jesuits who first reached the river Sagne, as it was then called, in their delight at reaching their goal, described it as being “as beautiful as the Seine, almost as rapid as the Rhone, and deeper than many parts of the sea,” and how Père Le Jeune, in particular, felt that they were the forerunners of a host of brave soldiers of the Cross who should subdue the land for the Lord. She remembered how the sight of some poor Indian captives, cruelly tortured by their captors arrayed in all their uncouth adornment of parti-colored paint, had so impressed the good Fathers with pity, that they only longed for an opportunity of preaching to them the gospel of love and peace, although, as Père Le Jeune observed, the same fate might at any time befall themselves. And, indeed, Père Le Jeune’s, observation on that head is well worthy of being recorded: