From Ottawa the trip was continued by boat one hundred miles to Montreal. This route affords a view of Lake St. Louis, Nun’s Island, and Lachine Rapids, the most dangerous part of St. Lawrence River, yet it is every day traversed by pleasure steamers, of which a traveler has thus graphically written: “In the descent of these rapids we are wrought to a feverish degree of excitement, exceeding that produced in the passage of the Long Sault. It is an intense sensation, and though perfectly safe, is terrible to the faint-hearted, exhilarating to the brave. Opposite Lachine is the quaint Indian village of Caughnawago, where still reside descendants of the once-powerful Iroquois Nation. The immense steel bridge spanning the St. Lawrence at this point is justly considered one of the engineering triumphs of the century. It was built by the Canadian Pacific Railway, is about a mile long, with two channel spans of 408 feet, and lofty enough to allow free passage to the largest steamers. From this bridge a fine view is obtained of the rapids, villages on either shore, loftiest structures in Montreal, and the distant mountains.”
CHAUDIERE FALLS, NEAR OTTAWA, CANADA, IN WINTER.—These celebrated falls are at the junction of the Rideau and Ottawa Rivers, in the immediate vicinity of the city of Ottawa. The volume of water as it thunders over swirling precipice is almost as great as that of Niagara, and the power displayed is wonderful to behold. Beautiful, grand and amazing as these falls are in summer, it is during the winter that their sublimest magnificence is impressed upon the visitor, when the Ice King has frozen them into a vision of ravishing splendor.
MONTMORENCI FALLS, NEAR QUEBEC.
Montreal is the metropolis of Canada, having a population of about 220,000, and being at the head of ship navigation, has improved its advantages and become the chief commercial port of the Dominion. The name is derived from Mount Royal, which rises 700 feet above the river, the eminence which Jacques Cartier ascended in 1535, and looked with startled eyes upon the palisaded Indian town of Hochelaga, surrounded by vast fields of grain, at the west base of the mountain. Sixty years later, when Samuel de Champlain made his way up the St. Lawrence and climbed to the summit of Mount Royal, he looked in vain for the town which Cartier had discovered and described. Only two of the native Indians of Hochelaga were found, from whom was learned the tragic history of the place, the inhabitants of which had been exterminated and the town destroyed by a rival tribe.
Montreal is situated on an island of the same name, and the eminences about it were so important as vantage-places that during the French and Indian wars (in 1665), the mount was fortified by the French, and in 1722 a citadel was erected on a height now laid out as Dalhousie Square. In its early history, therefore, the city was the scene of many incidents of Indian warfare, and was on disputed ground until the surrender of Quebec, in 1759, when the English gained permanent possession of the place.